Transposition
by Nyohah
Summary: Sequel to Bondage. AU. As Evil tries again to take over the Earth, it is up to SubZero and Mileena to stop it, but they can't do it alone. And little does SubZero know that the greatest threat and the greatest hope may lie within his own hometown.
1. Movement I: Accelerando, Chapter One

**Transposition**  
by Nyohah

Movement I:  
**Accelerando**

**Chapter One**

* * *

The mountains of northwest Argentina were quiet once again. The silence had been broken by the violence of the hunt, but the hunt was over, as was its aftermath, and now all that was left of the disturbance were two young women climbing through the Andes with unusually quiet and deft steps.

They had grown used to silence in the stalking that had preceded the hunt, and the return to it now seemed no less usual. Lundiy wondered if the noise of her home would startle her when she returned. There was always movement around the Kitsune village. Each warrior was as capable—if not more capable—of being silent as Lundiy herself and her traveling companion, Mistral. But also inhabiting the village were children and men, who were never as quiet as a deer crashing through underbrush. She imagined that the noise would come back slowly, as it had faded. And surely the presence of noise could not disconcert nearly as well as its absence. But she—fully a Kitsune warrior now and just awaiting a ceremony of recognition—could not allow herself to be startled by something so simple as sound.

She did not know what Mistral thought. She wasn't sure anyone ever knew what Mistral thought. She had met the woman just that morning, and she was shamed to admit that she might have failed her task and might even have died had their paths not crossed. Lundiy had been hunting a cougar, and Mistral a buck, and neither of them probably would have killed her own prey if it had not been for the others'. The animals they had hunted had been overwhelmed by the force of instinct and distracted from its pursuer by when the chase had forced them together.

But she and Mistral had both succeeded in the end, and the exact circumstances of those successes were and would be known to only them. No woman talked about the experience of her final hunt. It was entirely possible that an already dead carcass had supplied Mistral with the antlers she was now wearing on her head—or Lundiy the jawbone she was wearing on hers, as well as the bones to make the beads she had threaded onto her braids. But part of the process of becoming a Kitsune warrior was to develop a keen sense of honesty. Neither of them would ever be questioned. Mistral and Lundiy had accomplished what they had set out to do. Circumstances could never be entirely accounted for in advance. Such was the chaotic nature of the world. And neither Mistral nor Lundiy felt any need to discuss it.

Or anything else for that matter. But that was just as well for Lundiy. She listened intently for the gradual rise of noise she was sure would come with their approach to the village.

But, as it turned out, there was nothing gradual about it. No laughs of children, or the roll of cart wheels on uneven ground. No sounds of animals. It was just one climb over the right hill, and then came the screaming.

She and Mistral began running at once. Mistral was faster, so Lundiy was alone by the time she reached the village. What she saw there nearly made her sick. Everyone was dead. Everyone and everything. But still the screaming continued.

Lundiy ran further into the village, following the sound of the screams, seeing no life anywhere. Only death. The screams, she could tell as she neared them, were hysterical rather than terrified and were coming from a single throat. She ran under one last stone archway and around a corner, and there in the courtyard of the Kitsune headquarters itself stood a small, pale, white-haired woman, screaming, and Mistral standing a few paces back, examining her.

Lundiy walked over to Mistral, staring at the woman. She had a dark black streak running through her hair, and was wearing some of the strangest clothing Lundiy had ever seen. Purple and pink and shiny all over.

It was only because of its shininess that the woman's clothing registered at all. Lundiy was focused on the drying blood covering the woman's hands.

"What happened?" Lundiy said.

"This woman killed everyone," Mistral said.

"Has she spoken to you?"

"No," Mistral scoffed. "It's obvious."

"Then why is she screaming?"

"I do not know."

Lundiy looked anxiously at the Kitsune headquarters. "Is anyone at all left alive?"

"No one."

Lundiy shook her hands out and breathed deeply. The woman was still screaming. "I wish she would just stop," she said. "We have to do something, and I know I could think if she would just stop!" Lundiy reached for her head to run her hands through her hair and was startled by the jawbone that rested on it.

"Stop screaming?" asked Mistral. Or, at least, Lundiy thought she had asked, but Mistral then took her spear and touched the point to the woman's neck. "I said stop screaming."

The woman did stop and looked up at them with wide eyes. It was only then that Lundiy realized the woman's eyes were without irises or pupils—a solid, uniform white.

* * *

Yuan Li hated waking up before the sun rose. It reminded him of the brutal training of the Lin Kuei, of the obsessive drive to create an invisibility device that had once possessed him, and of taking care of his father's horses before going to school—all things he swore had nearly killed him.

Unfortunately, Yuan Li also hated lying in bed awake. It reminded him of being too sick to get out of bed, which had also nearly killed him—twice.

But, as his friend Yen Mulan had cheerfully pointed out to him, complete with finger quotes, he was 'the Boy Who Lived. TM J.K. Rowling.'

Both his parents were already awake and working, but he had managed to escape from morning chores again lately, which he was, admittedly, quite expert at, although his help had been less in demand back when his brother was around. This time, it wasn't that he had pled off for sickness, pouted when his mother was around, or even yawned a lot to show how sleep-deprived he was (when in reality he slept at least eight hours any night he wasn't required to rise before the sun the next morning). No, this time, he hadn't had to act to bring pity upon himself. It had just happened. But he supposed that was only natural given that he had been forced to leave the love of his life to die, for all he knew, in a hell dimension in the clutches of demons she used to serve, who now knew how she had betrayed them, no less. But it wasn't as though, if they killed her, it would be the first time. If Yuan was the Boy Who Lived, Hua Ching Sa was the Girl Who Died. A lot.

He supposed it was eerie how much their lives had paralleled, Ching's being, by far, the darker version. He had almost died when he was very young, from damage to his lungs; Ching _had_ died when she was young, from a fall. He had recovered miraculously to the surprise of his doctors; she had been resurrected by a demon and forced to be his servant. They had both been trained in martial arts their whole life, but Yuan's was mostly for show, while Ching was meant to kill. And the invisibility robe he had invented that had initially connected them in Hong Kong had nearly killed him, while the conflicts it had caused had led Ching to kill her master and for that, die again. Ching was resurrected and forced into service to Shang Tsung; Yuan recovered and was forced into the Lin Kuei; and they had met again in Mortal Kombat. Yuan had escaped that tournament. Ching had fallen into a coma after suffering huge injuries during her last fight, and Yuan had been forced to leave her behind.

He couldn't forget how Smoke had dragged him out the door of the medical ward. Ching's own father, who had trained Yuan hard so he would survive the tournament and worked to bring Yuan and Ching together again. Had left her. To rot.

Yuan slammed the rickety gate behind the Lis' house shut behind him and headed for town, ignoring his father leading horses around in the pasture.

If he were to say that he could not understand how Smoke could leave his daughter behind, then he would have to say that words could not express how much he could not understand how Smoke could sit around and do nothing knowing that she was still there. But Smoke refused to even discuss the subject with him. Anytime Yuan mentioned the words 'Ching', 'Outworld', 'your daughter', 'you're insane', or anything of the sort, he was met only with admonitions to wait and have patience. Granted, that was the Smoke he had always known. Waiting or patience had been involved in every other sentence the man had spoken to him even before the time he had begun training. While stuck in bed, trying to recover, filled with a child's excitement over learning to do something that his parents and his brother already knew how to do—even then, Smoke's words had always been instructions to be patient. But he had seen a different Smoke in Outworld—one who took an initiative, and actually seemed to care about doing something to better things in the world rather than to just exist in the world as it was.

It must've been the air or something, because upon returning to Yanxubin, the Smoke with initiative had disappeared once more, leaving the same old Smoke practically chanting 'patience, patience...'

Looking at the village of Yanxubin, shadowed by the triple-storied monolith that was Mr. Yen's house and business, Yuan realized if it was the air anywhere, it was the air in Yanxubin. The place seemed almost enchanted into stagnation. The only person who ever did anything was Mr. Yen, and it was hard, looking at any corner of Yanxubin, let alone the whole, to not see his mark upon the place, clearly defining him as the citizen in charge, albeit economically.

Yanxubin. The Final Coast. Whatever that meant. It was closer to desert and Siberia than any large bodies of water, let alone the ocean. Yuan had lived there all his life and had gradually come to realize just what an odd place it was. If he had to sum it up with one simple fact, he would offer that there was a memorial in the cemetery constructed a mere quarter of a century ago that no one in town would admit to knowing the meaning of. And there was more.

It was a young town, built just as the communist government of China began adopting capitalist economic policies. But everyone who lived there—most much older than twenty-five—listed it as his hometown and place of birth. It had benefited from the economic reform by gaining freedom and money while it was being built and clearly had lacked the characteristic poverty of the time. But it had—in an effect he was, just this morning, beginning to consider writing up and calling the Yanxubin Effect—changed very little since its building, missed entirely by the rebuilding, renovating, and reorganizing that had swept the country during his lifetime. And it had always, ever since he had first traveled to nearby cities and found out what China looked like, seemed to him like a piece of the world trying desperately to be China while being something else entirely at the same time—something he had never seen the likeness of anywhere else.

It wasn't just uniqueness that set Yanxubin apart. There was uniqueness all over China. The citizens of his hometown were just one of dozens of minority ethnic groups overwhelmed and surrounded by the Han Chinese. But there was one important distinction between the people of his town and the other small groups. The others had histories and held tightly to them and their cultural distinctiveness. The people of Yanxubin appeared seemingly from nowhere in 1975 and threw themselves into the throng, trying to be like everyone else, but lacking the ability.

And they were ignored.

Yuan sighed and headed through the middle of town toward Mr. Yen's house. Someone would let him in, and then he could mess around with Mr. Yen's newest toys and eat various sugary breakfast items until Mulan woke up. And then, maybe, they could do something that would make him forget for an hour or so.

* * *

Just before dawn broke, Enmity stood in the middle of the village of Yanxubin, staring at footprints in the mud around a manhole. They had not been there when she had left, and considering she had left only four hours before, and most of the village had not yet awoken, she had reason to be suspicious. Especially considering that the manhole in question was the entrance to Lin Kuei headquarters.

But, as she could tell immediately after seeing the footprints, the person who had created them had merely walked across the hole without pause. She was not worried, just curious, but her curiosity always tended toward suspicion. Anyway, she knew who had made the footprints, and he was a Lin Kuei. A good fifth of the town was Lin Kuei. Something much closer to ninety percent of the town either was or was related to a Lin Kuei. The clan was the only true power in Yanxubin. The Chinese government was, in Yanxubin at least, powerless compared to the Lin Kuei. There were horror stories among the Chinese military about what happened when task forces were sent to try to make Yanxubin comply to things it wouldn't, whether it was because the Lin Kuei didn't want it that way, or because Yanxubin was too sluggish to comply with anything that resembled forward progress. Enmity knew there were horror stories because she had helped to ensure there would be.

A swift bout of cruelty now will save endless struggle in the future, was what her father said. His version of 'a stitch in time saves nine'.

Her father, the headmaster of the Lin Kuei, was the only true power in Yanxubin. And she was his most trusted servant. Most trusted by him. To the others in the Lin Kuei, she was the least trusted and the most feared. No one outside the Lin Kuei even knew she existed. It was as though it was forbidden to speak of her. Her name was the closest thing Yanxubin had to superstition, and she was proud. No one but her father knew her birth name, and he never called her by it. If there was power in a name, Enmity's, as her father's, was hardly diminished.

Enmity slid the manhole cover to the side and dropped the five feet into the hole. She landed on a small, uneven hill made of mud that had been formed under the entrance to facilitate easily closing the manhole. She reached up swiftly and did just this, then ducked to fit under the thick outside wall and walked, partially crouched, forward along the corridor that twisted off to the left. As she went farther along, walking down the mud hill, the ceiling rose above her until it was high enough that she could not have touched it if she jumped.

The walls of the Lin Kuei headquarters were tarnished and had long since lost their gleam, but they were still clearly metal, as was the floor. The door she approached was not. The door at the right end of the entrance corridor was mere metal, and a simple password could open it. The door she approached was stone, and could only be opened by the highest-ranking members of the Lin Kuei. It led nowhere special, but served as a shortcut around much of the training area and the curved corridors that connected each of the small rooms. It was best if the high-ranking ninjas were seen the least so that their appearances would instantly garner them attention and fear.

She opened the door by applying her power—fire, naturally, as she took after her father—in a specific and complicated way. She continued her customary route through headquarters, turning down every left corridor and passing three more such doors before finally arriving at the large, semicircular chamber that served as her father's living quarters. This door she hit with as strong a burst of fire as she could muster—she knocked. Seconds later, the door opened outward silently, and Enmity stepped into the most secure spot in Yanxubin. The walls were metal, and everywhere they were exposed, they shone from polish. Most of the walls, however, were covered in muted hangings—some of the most valuable works of art in Yanxubin, most containing her father's favorite words of wisdom, written in the characteristic swirling of Mandalorian script with sharp lines of punctuation. The floor had been tiled with dark reddish-gray clay tiles.

She did not know what the ceiling looked like, for she had never seen it. The room was dark, lit only by torches, and Enmity bent her head as she entered, took the requisite three steps forward, and knelt. Vendetta—she did not know his real name, and her family name was her mother's—approached and stood in front of her. She focused on his two-toed black boots.

"What have you to report?" he asked her, his formality archaic-sounding even to her ears.

"I scouted Mr. Yen's manor this morning, as you asked me," she replied. "I do not know what I was looking for or why I was there, but I saw only one thing of suspicion. Sub-Zero approached early in the morning, much before dawn, and entered the house. He was dressed in civilian clothing. I believe he is friends with the daughter of the house."

"Yes, he is."

"The house was quiet. It had some semblance of security, but nothing that would keep out anyone with any skill. Is there someone inside that we are to assassinate?"

"No, no, Enmity. It has come to my attention that it is time for the Lin Kuei to embrace technology."

She had been in training under and subservient to her father her entire life, and she still almost jerked her head up in surprise.

"Master?" she asked. "Respectfully, sir—"

"It is not," he said, sternly, "a daughter's place to question her father. It is not a student's place to question her teacher. It is not a servant's place to question her master. Why do you feel it is your place to question me?"

"No excuse, Master," she said quickly.

"Good," he said. "I wouldn't want to have to entrust my most necessary operation on someone else."

"I wouldn't want anyone else to have it, Master," she said.

"Good. I need you to know every aspect of Yen Sa's house. Every step in every person's routine. Every time they deviate. Every person they have contact with. Where everything is kept. And everything he is capable of."

"Is he a danger, Master?"

"Everything he is capable of technologically," he replied, as though she were stupid. "He is no more a threat than a de-clawed kitten." He laughed.

"Yes, sir," she said. "I will gather this knowledge for you. I will start now."

"No, no need for that," he said. "You may train first."

"Thank you, sir."

"You are dismissed," he said.

He turned and walked away, and she backed herself out of the door. She tried not to let her father's sudden interest in technology bother her as she hurried to her quarters. She had been in civilian clothing for too long.


	2. Chapter Two

**Transposition**  
by Nyohah

**Chapter Two**

* * *

Hua Ching Sa saw in reds and whites, vivid over-bright splotches of color that melted together and had depth but lacked form. She knew she was lying on a bed in a small cubicle room carved of stone, but she could not see the walls, and she could not feel the bed beneath her. She felt only hot and sharp, in excruciating instants in which she was sure she jerked and writhed in pain, biting her tongue to keep from screaming for it to stop. She wasn't sure, however, whether she was even able to move or scream. She heard on occasion, but what she heard sounded like the groaning of the world beneath her rather than the sound of anyone or anything real. The sound filled her ears and came in waves that peaked at such intensity that she thought her head would implode from the pressure.

And always she could sense the constriction around her neck, resisting her gasping for breath. Just a small band of metal with a few etchings, and the thought of a powerful being invoking it, and she was taken from the world of real and placed in the world of pain.

She couldn't say she didn't deserve it, though. This time she had tried to strangle Shang Tsung with her bare hands when he came to see if she was ready to behave. She had done something stupid every time they had come to see if she was ready to behave, ever since they had first called on the power of the collar. They had found her letter and knew she had planned to send it to Earth. She still felt their fury.

The pain was getting worse, but she could handle pain. Pain was nothing but proof she was alive. She had learned that first-hand when she was young, and as the demon she was expected to serve would want her dead for her betrayal once he had finished punishing her, she almost welcomed the pain. She wasn't sure death would stop her punishment—the demon had intercepted her in death once before—but she knew she would no longer feel pain if she were not alive.

'Alive' was somewhat of a fleeting concept for Ching.

It was the loss of her senses that disturbed her more than anything. She felt she had been ripped from the dimension she was meant to live in and thrust into one where no human rules applied. She had no body to fall back on, no physical agility to help her. It was just her and her mind lost in a world of pain and disorientation, and she was beginning to find her mind to be a scary place.

* * *

Kitana sighed and stood. The chair at Mileena's bedside was not comfortable enough for her to sit and plead any longer. When she had had hope, she had never really noticed the way the support to the seat was broken so the frame of the chair cut off circulation to her legs. The past few times she had tried to get through to Mileena, though, she hadn't been able to concentrate on anything but.

The woman was somewhere far away, and Kitana needed her help. Outworld wouldn't free itself, and Kitana couldn't free it by herself.

Much like Mileena could not free herself from the torture inflicted on her by her masters. She would make a fearless and stubbornly strong ally and was probably the most talented fighter in Outworld—whether she was better than Liu Kang, twice champion of Mortal Kombat, had never been established, for they had never fought. As it was, there were only three people in all of Outworld that she knew she could trust. One of them was delirious and unreachable. One of them was incapable of failing to follow Kitana's orders, but was also incapable of failing to follow her enemies' orders. Kitana was understandably hesitant to entrust her with too much.

The third was Kitana herself. She didn't want to expose herself yet, but it seemed she didn't have much of a choice. She would do whatever she could covertly until she could no longer be covert. By then, she hoped to have some support.

The door to Mileena's hospital room creaked open, and the old wrinkled hag called Succubus shuffled in, carrying a pile of white cloth for bandages and a bowl of some liquid that was quite foul smelling, but foul smelling in a harsh, cleansing sort of way. Mileena had flung herself off of her bed a few days before and gashed her cheek on the chair, so now she was restrained by ropes, and the skin was starting to come off where the ropes were. She had wounds that needed attention.

Kitana inclined her head politely to the hag—she was, oddly enough, respected by everyone but Shang Tsung, so Kitana followed suit—and left the room.

Jade dropped down from the ceiling in front of her, and Kitana almost shrieked.

"Don't do that," she said.

"Sorry," Jade said, with a tilt of her head that implied she wasn't the least bit sorry. Kitana thought she might even be smirking under her mask. She wondered if 'don't do that' counted as an order, or if she would have to intend a statement to be an order before she said it for Jade to be required to obey. She guessed she would find out the next time Jade tried to find her.

"I still can't speak with her," Kitana said, leading Jade down the hall toward Kitana's private chambers. "I have to know what she knows, but she doesn't hear me when I say anything."

"We'll have to do it without her," Jade said. "Even if she were awake, she would never be trusted to go anywhere without a heavy guard. She couldn't help us."

"Everything we do has to be absolutely secret and subtle. No one can know what we're planning unless they're on our side." Kitana sighed again. "Besides, I need her for information if nothing else. She used to be one of this Demon Master's closest servants, and I don't have any idea what he's capable of."

"I don't think we should be taking him out," Jade said carefully.

"No? He's in charge. We just leave him?"

Jade shook her head. "We leave him to someone else. That's all I'm saying."

"Who else, if not us?" Kitana asked. "Who else could we leave him to? Who else is there?"

"There are a few people in this palace who may not be opposed to the idea of a return to Edenia." Jade shrugged. "So long as you promise them power."

"The Edenians? You don't think we can hope for anyone else?"

"No, I don't."

Kitana clasped her hands together. "I guess it's a start. You feel them out. Try to see if they would go for it."

"Without letting them know that we're going for it. Easy." Jade looked away.

"I know it won't be easy. But we can't do this any other way."

"Yes, I know," Jade said, and turned away.

"Wait!" Kitana said, grabbing her arm.

Jade looked back at her. "Yes?"

Kitana let go, and hesitated, wringing her hands. "How many Edenians are there with any power?"

This time, Kitana knew Jade smirked under her mask.

"Two." Jade disappeared.

"Yeah," breathed Kitana. "That's what I thought."

* * *

"You...love me?" Tanya asked in a carefully inflected breathy whisper. She looked up at the man from under her eyelashes. Coy was the word to describe her look. Coy was what Rain said the word was.

The man in question was one of the survivors of Kahn's invasion of Edenia. He had swallowed his pride and become a bit servant, gradually rising in the ranks to become a fairly well respected servant during the years in which Tanya was growing up. He could have been her father, if not respectably. Tanya didn't care. She wasn't too keen on letting the man touch her, but she would do what she had to get what she wanted. Sometimes she relished the touching—it all depended on the man. If it were the right man, she would do all she could to get him to hurry the process along. Sometimes she would even instigate it if he were the type of man who wouldn't mind an instigator.

Of course, she only _loved_ one man, but a girl like her couldn't be satisfied by the gifts of one man, especially not one so stingy as her man. But that was just Rain. He was frugal. It was part of why he was so successful. And she was part of why he was so happy. When she was in love, Tanya was a real giver. It was just that when she wasn't in love, she was a real taker.

"I...I don't know what to say," she breathed, clutching her hands to her chest as the man held out a diamond bracelet. He must have sold half of what he owned to buy it for her, which meant she would probably have all he owned without much trouble, no touching required. That was the beauty of being a well-respected, perfectly coiffed courtier of the palace—men expected that she expected treasures before she would even notice them. At the very least, anything they presented her had to top whatever she was wearing at the time of presentation. Tanya had many wardrobes full of pretty things.

She heard footsteps coming down the hall, unselfconsciously loud and militarily precise. She almost groaned—she needed more time to do this properly!—but kept herself outwardly...coy...and quickly accepted the bracelet, then leaned up and whispered in his ear a time and a meeting place. He would bring some other large chunk of his possessions to her then.

She set off walking down the hall away from the footsteps as though nothing were afoot and hoped the man she left would do the same. As she walked and heard the footsteps approach, she palmed the bracelet into the snug wristband of her sleeve.

Rain caught up to her just around the next corner.

"Good take for today, Tanya?" he asked, stopping her with a firm but not angry grab of her arm. "I see your skirt isn't unnecessarily pouffy, so it must not have any hidden pockets. And your dress is cut much too low for you to have hidden it in your favorite spot." He grabbed her other wrist and turned her toward him. Just the hint of a smile on his face made her grin helplessly at him. "Sleeve?" he asked.

She nodded.

He raised an eyebrow. "Is it pretty?"

"It's decent," she said, pulling her arms free and giving him a pout. He cocked his head to the side and offered her his arm. Her pout turned into a smile against her will, and she took it.

"You don't mind?" she asked him in her best sultry voice.

"Have I ever minded before?" he asked her.

"No."

"Then why would I mind now?"

"You know," she said, "if you bought me things, I wouldn't have to go get them myself."

"I don't have to buy you things because you get them yourself."

"But if you bought them for me, I wouldn't get them myself."

"Yes, you would," Rain said. "Do we have to have this discussion every time? I really don't mind, Tanya. It saves me a lot of trouble and gives you a nice hobby. And now," he said, pointing down the corridor to the generals' meeting room, "I have to go this way, and you can't come."

"I'll see you later, then," Tanya said.

"Right. Try not to confuse me with the old guy." Rain turned sharply and marched away.

Tanya watched him until he turned and entered the room. Then she pulled the bracelet from her sleeve and ran it through her fingers.

* * *

Rain entered the Outworld generals' meeting room and found it to be chaos. But he was unfazed. He was a general of Outworld's armies. Outworld's armies were chaos. The utmost care had to be taken when executing any operation that involved both the Centaurions and the Shokans, for the two groups held their thousand-year feud to be in equal standing with their orders, and the leaders of the groups were not helpful in settling disputes, as they were tied up in more long-lasting and bitter disputes themselves. The mutants, in turn, were never cooperative, no matter what the task. He found them very difficult to deal with because they had governing rules in their culture that were completely foreign to him. But he was certainly better at dealing with them than either of the other generals.

Motaro commanded the Centaurions. Sheeva was the newest in the line of the commanders of the Shokans. And Rain was left with everything else. Sometimes Shang Tsung ordered around the Shadow Priests, but that was usually in addition to Rain's orders rather than instead of, whether Tsung's orders circumvented Rain's or not. But there was no army of Edenians, so Rain commanded the Shadow Priests and the mutants—two very different groups to deal with. But, he thought as he watched Motaro kick Sheeva across the room, at least the mutants acted with more maturity than either the four-legged Centaurions or the four-armed Shokans.

Sheeva snarled at Motaro, pushing her upper body off the ground with her lower two arms while she made threatening and rude gestures at Motaro with her upper two arms. Motaro laughed at her and scuffed his hoofs on the stone floor.

Rain had noticed long ago that Shokans were incredibly top-heavy. Sheeva, as a female, lacked the customary shoulder bulk of the males but more of her was leg, as opposed to the squat build of males, so she still had too high a center of balance. She weighed twice as much as he did easily, but he knew he could knock her over with a quick shove.

It wasn't, however, possible to have too low a center of balance, so the Centaurions could not be guilty of that. Rain was always comparing the two races. It was, he thought, the only way he kept himself sane when he was forced to be around them. He had not yet conclusively decided which of the two had benefited more from their evolution. He was leaning toward the Centaurions, however.

Sheeva leaped onto Motaro's back, locking her long legs around his girth and grabbing the ram's horns on either side of his head and beginning to twist his head around and back. He snapped at her, and she laughed. Then he bucked, and in one furious turn of his head—powered by his grotesquely bulky neck muscles—he threw her off his back and onto the floor. She rolled away just in time to avoid being stomped on.

Rain had seen Kintaro, the Shokans' former very male and very bulky leader, grab Motaro by the horns and throw him. But Kintaro's reign had been short-lived and ineffective. He had been killed by a small woman, after all, which had greatly hurt the Shokans' pride at being virtual fortresses. Kintaro had been the biggest of them all. But the Shokans' pride had first been decimated by the demise of Goro, their longtime prince. He had been killed by a human from Earth—he'd had some certain job that Rain had not quite been able to assimilate. The best description he had gotten had only made him think of Tanya.

Being killed by Tanya would be a very embarrassing thing indeed.

Needless to say, the balance of power between the two races had shifted from the Shokans, who had been favored for generations, to the Centaurions and their representative, Motaro.

Motaro was not a promising look at the Centaurions, by any means. But from Rain's experience, he was a very accurate look at the Centaurions. Rain would have preferred that the power stay—artificially—balanced in the Shokans' favor. The Centaurions were bulky, vicious, and somewhat stupid, but that was all the bad one could say about them. The Shokans' were bulky, vicious, and somewhat stupid, but that was in addition to a great many other faults. With Goro, Kintaro—and now Sheeva—Rain had always known where he stood. A little above, a little to the side, and well out of the reach of even their long arms, due in part to the flaws of their own race. If Motaro decided he wanted to crush Rain like a worm, Rain wasn't sure he could stop him.

But that would never happen, because Rain had allies in places no one would ever suspect. No one ever had. Not until now, at least.

He was—not worried. Uncomfortable. He knew neither of his usual bosses—Shao Kahn and Shang Tsung—had ever suspected him of having loyalties that lay anywhere but directly at their feet. But Rain didn't know this new boss—this Demon Master, as everyone called him. And he was precisely that. Unarguably demon, and unarguably the Master. Even the great Kahn groveled. Rain half expected him to kneel and press his forehead to the ground in complete subservience, except that Rain had also long suspected that Kahn was not bendy enough to manage such a thing.

He supposed, with a wry grin to himself, that not being able to bow to one's master was a reasonable enough motivation for making oneself the master.

If this Demon Master was powerful enough to make the conqueror of galaxies prostrate himself, however figuratively, how powerful was he? Powerful enough to know all things? Powerful enough to see the threads of loyalties?

Rain composed himself. It was not a hard task for him, even with Motaro and Sheeva still trying to gouge out each other's eyes. He didn't, however, know if it was enough.

His bosses entered eventually, Kahn entering first, and Tsung tending to the Demon Master as though he were a handmaiden, following. Unlike Rain, Tsung was never above groveling if he thought it would bring him power. Rain's very refusal to grovel, though it had almost cost him his life on more than one occasion, was a key ingredient in his success. He had no unusual strength or power beyond the ability to command, but the Shadow Priests and the mutants were well known for refusing to follow those they perceived as weak, eviscerating them in each their own way.

The Demon Master himself looked like a ghost, robed in white with a deathly pallor, and spoke with a eunuch's voice. He looked frail and easily breakable, but carried easily a heavy headdress with horns as long as a man's arm curving around to the front. He waved away all of Shang Tsung's attempts at ministrations, and raised one finger, tipped in a golden claw.

*The time has come,* he said, without bothering to open his mouth, and Rain staved off a shiver.

"What he means," said Shang Tsung, "is that everything is going according to a most brilliant plan. In no more than one month's time, an opportunity of a most genius nature will open—"

"Prepare your armies," Kahn cut in. "And prepare them well. We are going to take the Earth realm."


	3. Chapter Three

**Transposition**  
by Nyohah

**Chapter Three**

* * *

Feeling as though she were betraying all the dead of her clan, Lundiy led the now-quiet murderess into the Kitsune headquarters. Mistral was ahead of her, walking more quickly than Lundiy was able, especially when leading someone. Mistral headed for the central, secure enclave of the building. Lundiy, increasingly frustrated with having to pull a fully grown and clearly mature woman as though she were a child, stopped at the kitchens.

She sat the murderess on a chair in the dining area and walked backward toward the door that led to the kitchen itself. At the doorway itself, she hesitated, reluctant to let the woman out of her sight. With a deep breath, she hurried to a cabinet, stepping over the body of the main cook, and pulled out several dish rags. She wetted these with cold water, not waiting for the water from the faucet to warm.

When she got back to the dining area, the woman hadn't moved. Lundiy wasn't sure she had even blinked; she now had tears running down her face, but she was neither sniffling nor sobbing.

Lundiy threw the rags on the table in front of the woman and pulled a chair up close to her. She took one rag and began to wipe the blood off the woman's hands.

"Why did you have to come here," Lundiy muttered at her. "None of these people did anything that deserved death."

The woman did not respond. When Lundiy finished with her left arm and dropped it, it fell so that her wrist hit the side of the chair. Lundiy winced and grabbed a clean towel. She took the woman's right hand gently and began to wipe it off.

"Who are you?" Lundiy asked. "How did you come to be here? Did someone send you to hurt us?"

The woman didn't answer. Lundiy cleaned her right arm carefully and gently laid it on the table.

"Well," Lundiy asked, "are you hungry? Thirsty? Should I draw a bath for you before you kill me?" She stood and shook her head. "I'm sorry. I'll—get you food."

She hurried into the kitchen and began rooting through the pantry. Most of their food was fresh and required cooking. Lundiy had never cooked anything. She pulled two ears of corn out of the pantry and wondered if they should be boiled.

"Lundiy!" she heard Mistral yell. Terrified, she ran back to the dining area.

The woman had not moved. Her left arm was hanging limp, and her right was lying on the table where Lundiy left it.

Mistral was standing behind her, holding a scroll. "Why did you leave it alone?"

Lundiy shrugged timidly. "She doesn't move."

"She's still a danger. She killed everyone. Put the corn down and come here." Mistral slammed the scroll on the table.

Lundiy looked at her hands and felt her face flush. She set the corn gently on the floor and stood across the table from Mistral. They were almost eye-to-eye. Mistral pushed the rags off the table and wiped the remaining water away with her arm, then unrolled the scroll.

"This looks the oldest and was the most protected, so I thought we should start with it," Mistral said.

"Start what?" asked Lundiy.

"Looking for what we need to do."

"Mistral," Lundiy said softly, "I don't think we can look at old writings to tell us what to do now. We need to think of this ourselves."

"We need to know what to do with that." Mistral jabbed her finger in the murderess's direction, coming close to touching her. The woman did not flinch. "She is not of this realm. Her clothes—"

"Her eyes." Lundiy shuddered.

"Her eyes. Her hair. Her power. If the elders were here we would ask them what to do with an outsider or a demon. But the elders are not here. All we have are the texts."

"The source of their wisdom," Lundiy agreed softly.

"Yes. But they're written in the old language, and I don't know it very well."

Lundiy shook her head. "Neither do I." She sighed. "But maybe we can puzzle it out together."

She leaned over the scroll and studied it. "This is 'the'," she said, pointing. "And down here is 'water'. "

"Sand," Mistral said. "Here and here. And 'black'. "

"I don't think we're going to get very far like this. We don't know any of the important words. Is there a translation? A dictionary? Anything at all?" Lundiy pressed her hands against her forehead. "I can read it, but I don't know what it means."

"It's simple to read," Mistral said. She read the first sentence of the scroll and shrugged.

The murderess stood suddenly, knocking her chair over backward. She repeated the sentence Mistral had read, speaking the language naturally. Then she asked them a question, in the old language. When they didn't answer, she repeated it.

And when they didn't answer, she repeated it again.

* * *

Tanya sat at her vanity with her back to the mirror and pouted.

"Please let me come. I never see you."

Rain sighed and threw another pair of boots into his trunk. "It's not like they're civilized, Tanya. Or anything you would want to seduce. They're mutants. And they don't have anything valuable except muscle and the blades growing out of their arms."

"I don't want to go to see them, though I never have been out there or met one in person—"

"There's a reason for that, Tanya. They'd rip you to bits."

"I'm strong."

Rain slammed the trunk shut. "Not strong enough."

"But I don't even have to see them, right? I could just stay in the hotel."

Rain sighed. "There's not a hotel, Tanya. There's a camp. You can't stay away from them."

"But I don't want to see them. I want to see you. I never get to see you."

"I'm here now, aren't I?"

"But you're leaving in an hour."

"Am I? Well, you've missed your deadline, then, anyway. You would never be able to pack in time."

Tanya turned away from him and slammed a hairbrush on the counter. "That's not even the issue. I'd be with you. You'd protect me, right?"

"Tanya," Rain said. She could see him, framed perfectly in the mirror. "It's too dangerous. I couldn't take that risk. Besides, I just have to go out there and tell them in person that it's time to start mustering the troops, so they'll know we're serious. I'll be back in two days." He walked up to her and leaned over her to whisper in her ear. "Can you handle two days?"

She smiled, against her will. "I'll manage."

* * *

Walking at her usual pace, Jade took a corner sharply and flattened herself against the other side. She focused on the edge of the corner, waiting for whatever it was—if it was anything—to show itself. She held her breath to see if she could hear another footstep. She had only heard one, and that could have been a trick of echoes.

A minute passed, and she neither heard or nor saw anything. She resumed breathing, as quietly as she could, and allowed herself to fade into invisibility.

She felt a little silly, but she had every reason to be paranoid. She could not be caught. She did not know who in the palace would be able to catch her, but she had to be careful. She could not be caught. She never used the powers that made her such a good covert operative on business that wasn't supposed to be secret. So if anyone knew that she was using her powers to do something...

She wasn't being followed. No one was that good. Not even Reptile. And if it had been Reptile, it would have made Jade's life simpler, not more dangerous.

Still seeing or hearing no one, Jade stepped backward into the wall. Molecules of the very solid wall slid around her like honey and back into position as she passed. She turned and stepped into a courtyard.

It was the vine courtyard, remnants of an ancient garden left to go wild. Standing on tiles that still bore the marks of where benches had once stood were a dozen defiled Edenian statues. Reptile poked his head out from behind one of them, flicked his forked tongue, and hissed at her.

"There you are," she said, releasing her invisibility. "When I said 'vineyard', I meant the wine cellar."

"But this is the yard of vines," Reptile said and licked his snout. He shuffled forward in front of the statue and reset his camouflage so only his head was visible.

Besides being the easiest of Jade's tasks, this was going to be the most entertaining as well. She doubted she would conduct any of the rest of her business to a disembodied head. She put her hand over her mouth and tried not to laugh as Reptile continually turned his head back and forth and blinked, watching for someone to appear in the doorways on either side of the courtyard.

He finally turned his attention back toward her and snarled quietly. "You talk now. You said you would restore the people."

"Well, see, I can't do it by myself. That's why we're having this discussion. If everything goes well, everyone's people will be restored. Even yours."

"Do how?"

"Well, that's the thing. It involves some fighting, some planning, some threat of painful death, and a lot of treason." Jade drew in a deep breath and hoped that she had estimated Reptile's desire to no longer be the last of his race correctly as 'will do anything'.

"Treassson," Reptile hissed unsurely.

"Betrayal. Of Shao Kahn, Shang Tsung, and this new master."

Reptile snapped his head once to the side and turned back toward her. "I do not care for this new master. But Master Kahn and Master Tsung—"

"Shao Kahn is the one who destroyed your people. He must pay."

"Yes. Yes, yes, he must." Reptile flicked out his tongue and looked back and forth at the opposite entrances a few times. Jade held her breath and tried not to fidget.

Reptile finally looked back at her, then turned his snout down toward the ground. "But Master Tsssung—"

"Shang Tsung had been helping Shao Kahn for a long time before your people were destroyed, before my people were destroyed. No matter what he has said to you or done for you, I doubt he made any attempt to save your people. In fact, I'd bet anything I owned that he helped to destroy your people as he is helping to try to destroy the Earth Realm." Jade paused for effect, then said, "But, Reptile, the truth is that even if Shang Tsung actively tried to prevent the end of your people, he will actively try to prevent us from restoring them. If you want your people back, you will have to turn against Shang Tsung." She shrugged. "But if you don't want the people back—"

"I want the people back," Reptile snarled. "I will do anything I must to get the people back."

"Will you follow the orders I bring you?" Jade asked. "Will you keep secret everything we are doing to restore your people and the other people that Shao Kahn has destroyed? Will you risk your life to protect our fight?"

"Yes. Yes, yes." Reptile nodded.

"Good," Jade said. "Then we have a deal. Be prepared at all times for the fight, and I will find you when you are needed, understand? Don't find me. I'll find you."

"I understand," Reptile said. "I must have the people."

"You will have the people."

Reptile licked his snout, and darted away, his camouflage a half step behind him at all times.

Jade turned herself invisible and waited for the sound of Reptile's footsteps to fade away. Then she headed for the entrance opposite the one Reptile had taken. As she stepped into the doorway, she heard a footstep faintly behind her. She whirled, but the courtyard was empty. Across the way, in the opposite doorway, she saw an unusual shadow.

Someone really was trailing her. She concentrated on breathing silently as she watched for movement in the shadow—for movement of whoever was causing the shadow.

Minutes passed, and the shadow never trembled. It didn't look quite like a shadow caused by a person, but Jade couldn't figure out what else could be causing it—where was the object and where was the light source?

She stepped backward until her shoulders brushed against the wall, and then she stepped into it and hurried away.

* * *

Enmity had been hiding on the roof of Yen Sa's garage for hours. The garage was the least secure part of his property. Yen Sa cared much more about the technology being developed by the business he ran inside his overly large house than the car he kept in his much smaller afterthought of a garage.

Mr. Yen was always at work; Mr. Yen was always at home.

Much like her father. But much more concerned with fleeting, corrupting, material things like cars. Of course, Yen Sa was less concerned with the safety of his car than other rich men she had heard of. And he had only one, unlike other rich men she had heard of. And it was neither new nor so old it was exceptionally valuable. His daughter—dressed in tailored jeans—had taken it three hours ago.

But Enmity could only thank Yen Sa for his nonchalance toward his automobile. His garage made an excellent vantage point. She could see everyone coming and going and often hear their conversations. It was even a better hiding place now that it was getting dark, but it had done admirably well in the light. The roof was black anyway, and no one, so far, had looked up.

She had started her mission inside the building, wearing a black pantsuit that had made her look every bit the professional businesswoman. However, she had had no business to conduct, and neither had she the knowledge to pretend to have business to conduct, so she was unable to stay in any one place for very long. She had seen most of the company, hovering in a room only long enough that she didn't feel there was any chance she would be escorted off the premises. She had done her best not to be noticed, but in a village as small as Yanxubin, anyone unrecognized was noticeable. She had earned more second glances than she would have liked, but most employees, she felt, would think she was an outside businesswoman on a visit, and think no more of it. She could think of only one person in the entire company that could harbor suspicion for her at all.

The noxiously sweet front desk secretary.

The noxiously sweet front desk secretary who was now speaking to Sub-Zero.

Sub-Zero who was a close friend of Yen Sa's daughter and whose parents were close friends of Yen Sa himself.

How much did the secretary—Biao Ying Xi—suspect her? How much of a threat was she? Would she need to be eliminated?

And, if that were the case, how could she keep the secretary from telling Sub-Zero before she could take care of her?

Sub-Zero was a Lin Kuei ninja, but not just any Lin Kuei. If she killed a typical Lin Kuei, her father would be disappointed in the loss of resources. But Sub-Zero—this new Sub-Zero—was special somehow. If she killed Sub-Zero, her father would probably kill her.

She could not see why he was special. He hadn't been a ninja for very long, and he was not a very good one. If he were his brother, Enmity would have been discovered seconds after he walked outside. This Sub-Zero had not even glanced at the garage, let alone its roof.

The secretary laughed girlishly, and she and Sub-Zero moved a few steps closer to the garage. Enmity strained to hear them. Most other people she would have heard clearly at that distance, but neither of these was a very loud person.

"She's gone on a movie hunt," the secretary said. "She left pretty early today, but you know how she is. She'll look in every store and come back with a whole stack."

"A better selection is never a bad thing," Sub-Zero answered. "We're not paying for it, and she can certainly afford it."

"Yeah, and if she comes back with twenty we might find one that'll keep your attention, right?"

Sub-Zero looked at the ground and mumbled something Enmity could not understand.

There was silence between them for a few seconds. The secretary hugged her arms to her torso and tapped her feet.

"Well, let me know if your mother needs any help," she said, finally.

Sub-Zero looked up. "Oh, you know my mother. She never needs help, especially not when she really needs it."

"But make sure she knows the offer stands, right?"

"Okay, I will."

"Okay. Bye!" She waved at him and hurried off to the north.

Sub-Zero watched her for a while, kicking at the pavement of Yen Sa's driveway. Then, without so much as a glance toward the garage, he turned and headed west, toward the center of town.

Enmity closed her eyes in relief as he left. If the secretary had noticed her, she certainly would have been more distressed, not talking about movies and—she assumed—Yen Sa's daughter. Instead, she had seemed focused on Sub-Zero.

Just like everyone else. Her father may have had her gathering the knowledge he wanted, but he was withholding the knowledge she wanted.

Now, if she crawled around to the other side of the roof, she could have a limited view of the inside of Yen Sa's study, and with it anything he did in his off time that was top secret or illicit in any way. If her father had decided he was going to undo Yen Sa's false but apparent rule of the town, she was going to do everything she could to help him.

* * *

Yuan knelt at his family's table with a wicked idea. His mother was inside the kitchen, fluttering around in her usual way as she prepared ingredients for their dinner. She fluttered not in an overly feminine or graceful manner suggesting a butterfly, but rather as though she were going to war. He wouldn't have said that she fluttered at all except that he had no other words for the sight and sound of her. He was sitting at the side of the table directly across from the doorway to the kitchen, and from inside he could see a mess of skirt and sleeves whipping around in a pattern that was odd, but comforting in its familiarity, accompanied with a chorus of swishing, growing and dying away in time with the swirl of fabric.

His mother fluttered in the kitchen like female warriors fluttered in Hong Kong films.

Watching her familiar movements had brought upon him old memories, and reminiscing on these memories had brought upon him quite a wicked idea. She was completely preoccupied with his well-being, but not with his person.

His eyes strayed to his right, and he forced them back on her. She was within full view of him, and he was within full view of her; he was watching her, and she was not watching him. He slid cautiously to his right, eyes on her, waiting for a hitch in her movements. None came, and soon they were out of sight of each other. Yuan waited thirty seconds for her to call him or to come looking for him. Neither happened, and he leaned back to his left until he could see her again. Nothing had changed. He leaped to his feet and ran quietly up the stairs, his well-trained feet landing on the spots that would not creak.

Upstairs, he walked softly, knowing he was on dangerous ground. The floor gained more creaks with each passing year, and while he had tried to memorize them all to avoid waking his parents when he was up late, he had never much been allowed in his parents' room, and it would not be good to be caught there.

He had never been allowed where he was going.

He crossed the threshold into their bedroom, and looked to the ceiling. There it was, just as he remembered it. A trap door. The attic.

He and his brother had gotten in trouble for many acts of curiosity. His mother had a large, decorative bowl that, through a trick of shape, appeared to be illuminated by a light from within, though it was really the light from the room that made it almost seem to glow. Yuan couldn't count the number of times he and his brother had tried to climb onto a stack of whatever was available to peer into the bowl and try to find the light, only to be caught by their mother and punished. The bowl was fragile, he was sure, and boys in precarious positions were not a recipe for its lasting good health. Its shattering would not have been a recipe for he and his brother's lasting good health.

But there had only been one act of curiosity for which the punishment had been severe enough to prevent any further attempts. Trying to reach the attic. They hadn't gotten any further than opening the trap door—no more than a glimpse at the boxes stored above them—before his father had found them and taken them from the room, Yuan under one arm, Nei Jen dragged by the other. His parents had made quite sure neither of them would ever stray toward the attic again.

Yuan had assumed, at the time, that it had been because there were treasures in the attic—secret treasures greater than the lighted bowl—that his parents could not risk being seen or broken. As he grew up, he came to realize that his parents had probably been more worried about their sons' safety than anything else. Their house was not incredibly well built. It was not even twenty-five years old, and it creaked as badly as any old house, and had creaked for as long as he could remember. The attic would be the least stable part of the house, and no place for boys to play.

Watching his mother in the kitchen, however, a thought had struck him. What did his parents even have to store in an attic? None of his things and none of his brothers had ever been stored there, and like everything in Yanxubin, his parents' possessions dated no further back than 1975. Not knowing killed him.

He made it to the trap door without making a sound—he was, after all, a ninja—and pulled gently on the handle. He caught the ladder as it slid out (its clattering had given he and his brother away ten years ago), and lowered it gently to the floor. Then he started up.

As he stepped, finally, into his family's attic, he found that he had been wrong to assume that he and his brother were forbidden from the attic for any issues of safety. It was as sturdy as anything else in the house, with finished flooring. If the ceiling had been higher, it could have been a third story. His house had two, which was impressive for Yanxubin. He had sometimes wondered why his parents would build a two-story house when they had so much land available. It and Mr. Yen's house were the only houses in the village with more than one story. It was out of place in Yanxubin, but it would have been more out of place in the surrounding villages. On every trip to Beijing, Yuan saw only more clusters of four-story farmer's houses, marking the flood of good economic fortune that had swept over China. His parents' house was humble for China, but arrogant for Yanxubin, and he knew that the other villagers saw it that way. He had born the ill-will of the village toward his family his entire life.

The attic wasn't filled with boxes like he remembered. That had been the work of the imagination of a boy. In fact, there were no boxes at all, but there were two trunks, sitting side by side, disconcertingly in the middle of the room, as though on display. He knelt down in front of them, opened the lids, first left, then right, and gaped.

He felt he had stepped into a fairy tale. He had found his parents' secret treasures.


	4. Chapter Four

**Transposition**  
by Nyohah

**Chapter Four**

* * *

"Nothing about this place is normal," Yuan said, leaning in the kitchen doorway.

His mother stopped fluttering, holding a carving knife in her right hand.

"Nothing about this house is normal. Nothing about this entire village is normal. Nothing about this family is normal."

His mother set the knife down. "What makes you think this?" she asked.

"I've been wondering for some time about this village, but it never occurred to me before that it extends to this house and this family." His mother looked stricken, but he continued, merciless. "How can you all pretend that this is normal? That there's anything normal about anything here? Anyone older than twenty-five has to know the truth. Why does everyone pretend?"

"Pretend what?" His mother braced herself on the counter in front of the cut-up chicken.

"Pretend that we go back no further than—pretend that we weren't whatever we were twenty-five years ago. There's not a structure in this village older than that, not a possession on display in any house. Only people. And for all they admit, they might as well have been born in 1975, whatever age they are."

"I think—" his mother began.

"Mother," he interrupted her. He had never interrupted her before. "There's a graveyard with a memorial to _no one_ in this village, and no one will admit they know why it's there. We have a language of our own that no scholar has ever seemed to study. There's a clan of magic-using ninjas that seems to have been well-established before it got here twenty-five years ago, but no one outside of Yanxubin on this _planet_ knows where they came from. And I think the headquarters of the ninjas is in a _spaceship_, or at least a set from Star Trek. Which of those is supposed to seem less likely to me?"

She turned away from the counter, grasping her hands in front of her helplessly, like she was fishing for a simple excuse.

He waved his hand at her to keep her from speaking. "The things in our attic, Mother. Where did they come from, and how did they get to be in our attic?"

He knew the direct answers to both questions, but he had to make her confess them and hoped that with them would come better, more descriptive answers. Quite obviously, the things in the attic belonged to his parents, and they got there when his parents put them there. But how his parents had come to have such things, and why they had to store them in an attic to hide them from the world—these were things he needed to know.

The left trunk was his father's. It contained exactly three items. One was a valuable but worn-looking sword. Another was a suit of what looked like ceremonial armor. This, too, had clearly seen action. He had also never seen a suit of armor quite like it anywhere before.

The right trunk was his mother's. It was more full. Most of what it contained were parts of an outfit—a full and expensive-looking silk dress in green and black that came complete with elaborate embroidery, a cloak with a large emblem on the back, a silver circlet, and most puzzling of all, a painted fan with a hole burned through it. Buried beneath the dress was a book. Its title was _Navigation and the Fifth Dimension: Avoiding Disorientation in a Worm Hole_. His initial thought had been that it was a joke. Flipping through it, however, he had seen that it wasn't. It was a textbook, full of mathematics and diagrams.

His next thought had been that he knew what he would be reading for the next few days.

Out of the book had fallen a crisp, folded letter to his mother from a woman named Kei Sa who wrote in Yanxubin's unique dialect. He had read the first paragraph, but before he had finished the first sentence of the second, he had folded it quickly because it was much too personal for anyone else's eyes.

In both trunks he had found fingerless gloves with an electronic circuit in the palm—one in his father's trunk, a pair in his mother's. There was an empty socket in each circuit the size of a small coin. At first glance he had thought the socket was for a power source, but it seemed oddly constructed if that were the case. There was no other place a power source could be hooked in. And he couldn't understand why anyone would need electronic gloves.

Then, without warning, some protective short in his brain had broken and the words of the salutation of the letter had finally registered in his brain. If he leaned on the doorway of the kitchen, it was because he was unsure he could stand on his own with the way his blood was rushing erratically through his limbs.

"What things do you mean?" asked his mother, badly feigning ignorance.

"Do you need a list? Shall I make you a catalogue, Your Highness?"

Her eyes widened, and she froze.

"Is it true? I mean, please tell me it's a joke. A...pet name or something."

She sank slowly to the floor of the kitchen, her skirt catching the air to float down gently around her. She whispered something in their dialect, but he didn't catch what it was.

"It's not true?" he pleaded.

"I wasn't called 'Your Highness'," she said, looking at the floor.

He sighed and almost dropped to the floor himself.

"They called me 'Your Righteousness' or 'my queen'," she said, raising her chin until her eyes met his.

He did fall. "How?"

"My father was the emperor. My brother decided he'd rather rule the union than his birthright, and left it to me."

"No. I don't understand," he whimpered.

"Shao Kahn took our planet. We escaped here, because Cai—but lots of people died. Most of the people died. But we lived. And we live. Here."

"Planet?" He covered his face with his hands. "It is a spaceship." His voice was muffled.

"Planet. Realm. Whatever you want to call it. Like Earth. Like...Edenia." She shook her head. "Edenia was—"

"Princess Kitana's realm. I know. Now it's part of Outworld." He stood up, slowly. "Our planet is part of Outworld, too, isn't it?"

"It was called Mandalore," his mother said. "We were the Mandalorians. We were special."

"This is—this is just more. Ching. Mandalore? Mandalore. We can't just sit here. Shao Kahn—"

"Yuan."

"It's way past his time to be taken out. We could've done it last time if we'd all—forget the stupid rules. Why are there rules? He doesn't follow any rules."

"Yuan." His mother stood up. "I'm not finished."

* * *

Yuan stared down at the sword in the glass case. It was short and straight, with a thin blade. It looked like a rich person's sword—a decorative pattern was etched up the flat side of the blade, and the hilt was made of finely crafted leather engraved with its owner's name—but it had clearly been well-used, bearing the nicks of battle.

The name was their language. Mandalorian. Rah Cai Yue.

"He was my friend," said his mother. "We grew up together. His parents were rich; he lived in the palace. He liked history the way you like science."

Yuan's horse whinnied softly. He had dropped the reins—he didn't know when—but the horse stayed where it was, standing in the shade of the cherry blossom tree in the middle of Yanxubin's graveyard.

"He gave up his life so the rest of us could escape Edenia. This was when Kahn came. We were there. Mandalore was gone. There was a war. We were away from home a long time. The war was—we fought over false pretenses. We were tricked. When we got back, we had no home. And then Kahn came for Edenia.

"Cai Yue was...he was the hero of the day. He was the only person there who could create a portal. His element was gravity."

Yuan looked at his mother, who, he saw, had been watching him. "He was a Lin Kuei?"

She jolted. "No," she said sharply. Then, brushing her hands down her dress, more quietly, "No. One doesn't have to be Lin Kuei to use their element. It's the legacy of the Mandalorians. All our warriors used them until...until...long before I was born," she continued quickly. "We were among those trying to revive the practice. My honor guard."

"Your who?"

"There were thirteen of us. I was one of them." She gave a small, crooked smile. "So was your father and Yen Sa and Hua Quy Ling and Kei Sa—the woman who wrote the letter. She was the head of the honor guard. Ching's mother."

Yuan turned from her and brushed at a smudge on the glass with his sleeve.

"She was my handmaiden. Another good friend. She died...our last day...we were betrayed. And we fled. But not fast enough. Few of us made it to Edenia. Many fewer escaped."

She placed her hands on the case. "His sword came through just before the portal closed. It took all his strength and concentration to make a portal, but still he tried to fight to protect it. He's the reason any of us are here. And so we used his sword as a memorial for everyone."

Her hands were not the hands of a middle-aged woman. He had never noticed before. They were as well-kept as the rest of her, but despite their beauty, he did not see femininity in them. He saw strength.

Her hands had once been well-used to wielding a weapon.

He took a step back from the case, shaking his head. "No, mother," he said, "Shao Kahn is the reason any of us are here."

He grabbed his horse's reins and mounted it, turning it away from his mother and urging it forward in the instant before he hit the saddle.

* * *

Mistral looked strange, Lundiy thought, with books. Lundiy had always been good at her studies, but Mistral had shoved her aside and ordered her to look after the woman who had killed the rest of their clan. Lundiy thought it best not to argue, at least not when Mistral looked so determined. She resisted the urge to interrupt, even when Mistral muttered one of the few words in the old language Lundiy knew. She let the larger woman take as much time as she needed to find it in the enormous Edenian-Spanish dictionary she had propped in her lap. They had been using a much smaller version, but verb conjugation had been a problem. They had had too much trouble determining the root of the verb and had had to guess too often—guess at the meaning and end up with nonsense. It had been Lundiy's idea to look for a larger dictionary, one that contained all conjugations of all verbs in both languages. It had, however, been Mistral's idea to start with the Spanish words she wanted to find and scan the ancient texts for their Edenian equivalents, translating around those words rather than beginning at the start and proceeding in a linear fashion.

They needed an ancient, mystical 'what to do in case of emergency'.

Lundiy rested her head on folded arms on the table, watching the strange, foreign—violent—woman across from her. She had not spoken since she had realized that Lundiy and Mistral did not speak Edenian. Lundiy wondered what sort of assassin would come to a town fluent only in its ancient language and not its modern. Perhaps she was some sort of time traveler. She had never heard the elders speak of time travel with anything other than scorn, but Lundiy could not imagine how else someone could end up in northwest Argentina without the slightest knowledge of Spanish but fluency in a very localized ancient dialect.

She must be quite ancient herself, Lundiy mused. Ancient. Demonic. The two seemed unified to her.

"_Yanxubin_," Mistral said, managing to convey dislike even though she had difficulty pronouncing the word.

"That doesn't sound Edenian," Lundiy said, lifting her head off her arms and frowning.

"_Yanxubin_, _Yanxubin_, _Yanxubin_, everywhere _Yanxubin_, but it isn't here." She thumped the large dictionary in her lap.

"Is it important?" Lundiy stifled a yawn.

"Important? It's here, always. We're to seek help from _Yanxubin_." Mistral scoffed. "'Is it important?' Yes."

"That's our answer?"

"Yes," Mistral said curtly, "and it seems to be the only answer. For us. 'Self, comrades, elders, _Yanxubin_.' This is the order in which we are to seek help and judgment. I've counted it six times, already. We're using ourselves; we have no comrades or elders. We need this _Yanxubin_. But it isn't here."

"Perhaps," Lundiy said, looking across the table, "perhaps she knows."

Mistral shut the large dictionary. "'Enemies' was not one of our options."

"She knows our language better than we do. If we can find some way for her to answer." Lundiy touched the woman, gently, on the hand. "Madam? _Yanxubin_? Uh..." Lundiy faltered. "What is?" she asked in Edenian.

The woman shook her head. "'Yanxubin'. Mandalorian."

Mistral flipped through the dictionary hastily, running her finger down pages as she searched. Lundiy grabbed the other dictionary.

"Mandalorian," the woman said again. She tapped Lundiy on the hand. Lundiy looked up at her. She spoke the old language clearly and slowly.

Lundiy flipped backward in the dictionary.

"_Mandalorian_ isn't in here, either, Lundiy," Mistral said.

"No, I don't think it would be," Lundiy said absently. She found the first word the woman had spoken, noted the simple meaning, and flipped forward a few pages to find the second. Its meaning was equally simple, but the combination told her nothing.

"'Final coast'," she said. "It means 'final coast'. " She sighed. "It's nonsense."

"Coast?" Mistral said. "It sounds like a place."

"I think it's a riddle," said Lundiy. "The elders left us a riddle to figure out?"

"Did you see a map earlier?" Mistral tossed the large dictionary out of her way. It _whomp_ed onto the table.

"No." Lundiy rubbed her eyes. "The elders wouldn't leave a riddle as a replacement for themselves. That's...ridiculous."

Mistral pulled something from the bottom of the pile, shaking it so papers went everywhere.

Lundiy looked directly into the murderess's solid white eyes. "You lied to me about those words, didn't you? I suppose I should have expected it."

She jumped as Mistral slammed a large piece of paper down in front of her and tapped a specific point repeatedly with her finger.

"Yanxubin," Mistral said. "It's in China."

Lundiy grabbed Mistral's arm to stop her tapping and stared at the map.

"It's not on the _ocean_," she said.

* * *

Enmity knelt in front of her father and waited. The floor was hard and hot on her knees, but the discomfort was familiar. His lengthy silence was not.

Finally, Vendetta spoke, repeating some of what she had told him. She could not place his tone.

"One of Yen Sa's aides has been funneling company money into a personal account. Yen Sa knows but wants to try alternate means of reconciliation before calling the police."

"Yes, sir," she said. It was proof of Yen Sa's weakness.

"The front desk secretary is very close to Sub-Zero. So close she might know more about his time in the Mortal Kombat tournament than we do. So close she could be used as a means of getting to him."

"Yes, sir," she said. If Sub-Zero was so special, any access to him was valuable.

"You fool," Vendetta spat suddenly, his now irate tone as familiar as the tile. "You think inter-office dramas or Sub-Zero's little girlfriend are of any importance to me, to the Lin Kuei?"

"No, sir." She answered quickly before he continued his rant—it sometimes helped to quell his anger to agree with everything he said.

"Any novice could have brought me far more valuable information than you did, and you're supposed to be the best."

"Yes, sir."

"I trained you to be the best."

"Yes, sir."

"Is this a job well done, Enmity? Does this strengthen my trust in you?"

"No, sir; no, sir."

He was quiet again. She hoped quick agreement had been enough.

"I have no interest in the interpersonal relationships of Yen Sa's little enterprise," Vendetta said slowly. "Go back to his house. Focus on the technology. I need to know every type of _technology_ he is developing, where he is developing it, how to get to it, and who is working on it. I do not need to know who's dating whom!"

Something smashed against the door behind her. Bits of it rained on her back.

"Do you understand me, Enmity?"

"Yes, sir," she said.

"Shall I assign someone else?"

She flinched. "No, sir. I won't fail you again."

"I would hope not."

Enmity watched her father's boots turn and walk away from her.

"You are dismissed," he said moments later, off-handedly.

* * *

Smoke was training in his home when the door slammed opened and one of his students stomped in, waving at the smoky air in front of his face and looking determined. Smoke stood up and gave his student a stony look.

"Knocking is not optional, Sub-Zero, just because you are fully a Lin Kuei ninja now."

Yuan ignored this. "My mother's a queen," he said sprightly.

Smoke took a deep breath. "Now, where did you hear something like—"

"From my mother." Yuan crossed his arms. "By the way, I'm not a child, so the sooner you stop treating me like one, the smoother this will go."

"Yuan, you are—"

"Not a child. I'm twenty. I'm a fully-trained ninja, as you've just noted. I've fought in Mortal Kombat. I've invented something most modern scientists would never dream possible. I've loved; I've lost; I've killed. I'm not a child."

Smoke met his student's eyes. "Your mother told you?"

"Well, I found this crazy stuff she keeps in the attic. She sort of had to tell me." Yuan cocked his head. "Do you have an attic? Or do you keep your crazy stuff somewhere else?"

"What, now?"

"Mother told me all about her honor guard. You were in it. At least, she said Hua Quy Ling was, and that is your name, right? I didn't just make that up?"

Smoke gave him a weak smile. "That's my name."

"I thought so. And there's this whole world that was ours that was taken away by some, well, familiar evil faces." Yuan pivoted his right arm up at the elbow and held up his index finger. "So I'm thinking, you go to the grandmaster—he's Mandalorian, too, right? Of course, all the Lin Kuei would have to be, right? Or they couldn't be Lin Kuei?"

Smoke knew better than to bother with an answer when Yuan was thinking out loud, and before he could have given one, Yuan looked away and waved his hand dismissively.

"Never mind that now. If you go to the grandmaster, maybe you can convince him to throw the whole order behind this or at least get us some backup. Obviously, I can't take Shao Kahn alone, but all of us together... We're a pretty powerful group. Much better than a group of—of—" Yuan stopped and looked Smoke straight in the eyes. "A group of humans," he finished, more quietly. Smoke could tell from the look on his face that it was the first time he had realized that he could never be included in such a group.

"But I thought you should do it," Yuan continued quickly, "because you have so much more seniority than I do, and you were one of these special honor guards, so he might listen to you." He paused and braced himself, as though for a fight. "But if you don't, I'll go there myself tonight—"

"Yuan," Smoke said, "so was he."

"So was he what?"

"An honor guard, the grandmaster."

"Oh, so you don't sort of outrank him, then."

"Well," Smoke said, "technically, within the honor guard, but it didn't really work that way. Besides, he trained me. So, no, I don't outrank him."

"He trained you? He must be really old." Yuan blinked. "I mean—not that you're—it's a lovely day, right?" Yuan gave Smoke his best no-push-ups-please look.

Smoke sighed. "If he were human, he would be. It doesn't quite work that way for us."

"I always wondered about that—if it was just diet or something in the water. Or some sort of time-enchanting spell, because that would really have explained a lot about this town."

"No. It's just—genetics, I suppose."

"Well, see? This is why this is stupid. We can't stay here. We'll be found out, and then everyone will be harvesting our stem cells or something so they can inject them into their faces in the twentieth century search for the holy grail. We need our world back. We _deserve_ our world back. Everyone deserves their world."

"Yuan." Smoke held his hands up to try to slow the boy. "Mandalore is gone. It's gone."

"But if we defeat Shao—"

"Shao Kahn has been defeated before. Don't you remember? In Mortal Kombat, no less. Mandalore is _still gone_. Those of us who lived our lives there want it back more than you could possibly ever want it, and the reason we haven't tried to get it back is that there is nothing we can do to get it back. You hear me, Yuan? It is not in our hands."

Yuan was quiet.

Smoke turned to open the door for him.

"'Not in our hands', is it? But it's possible."

Smoke turned back and sighed. "No, Yuan, it's not possible."

"Oh, no." Yuan started to pace, shaking his finger at Smoke. "You didn't say impossible. You said it wasn't in our hands. But it's in somebody's hands? So, whose hands?"

"We don't know for sure," Smoke said carefully, "what the prophecy is referring to."

"You don't know what, but you know who?"

Smoke hesitated, then nodded his head once, slowly. "Yes, we know who. My daughters—Ching and Tung. That's why they were taken from me."

"Oh," Yuan said. "Well, you see, the thing about Ching is the last time we left her—remember when we _left her_?—she was in a coma, and thus not really able to save the world." Yuan clapped his hands together. "Unless she's doing it while in her coma with her secret mind powers, which she doesn't have. Unless it says that she does in that prophecy thing. Does it say that?"

"I've never read the actual prophecy," Smoke sighed. "I know of it. I knew enough to suspect it was about my daughters, and when you consider who their mother was—well, that alone was probably enough."

"So who was their mother?"

"She was—" Smoke shook his head. "All Mandalorians can control an element. You know that, don't you?"

Yuan nodded. "I didn't, but it makes sense."

"She couldn't."

Yuan raised an eyebrow. "So...she was special because... No, you've lost me."

"She had no elemental power, but she had power greater than any of ours. She had a psychic power much stronger than any elemental power, and she was the only Mandalorian ever known who had this power. She could...stop us from using our power. She could...kill with her mind."

"No, really?"

Smoke smiled crookedly, involuntarily, at Yuan's shocked and intrigued expression. "Yes. There were a lot of people who were scared of her, and there were a lot of people who thought she was destined to be some sort of savior."

"And you?"

"I mostly just always loved her."

"Yeah, I know how that is." Yuan shrugged. "But then she died, without ever saving you all—I assume, since we don't seem to be very saved at the moment. It makes sense that people would think that maybe her bloodline would continue that promise. Also, it makes sense that the girls would have unusual powers, since she was this strange genetic anomaly—"

"Yuan." Smoke squeezed his eyes shut. "You do have a way of making profound things sound distasteful, don't you?"

"Oh. Sorry." Yuan sighed and snapped his fingers a few times. "So, does this prophecy, uh, mention me?" Yuan looked at him earnestly for a moment, then cocked a hip and looked away, embarrassed, forcing a grin. "The tragically ill and phenomenally brilliant but not _entirely_ dorkish—"

"Yuan." Smoke gave him a weak smile. "Go home."

"I won't go home. She's still there." He was suddenly pleading. "You have to help me. She's—"

"Patience."

Yuan wilted instantly. "You won't help me."

"You're not a child. Have patience."

"Right." Yuan didn't look at Smoke. He turned and opened the door. "Patience."


	5. Chapter Five

**Transposition**  
by Nyohah

**Chapter Five**

* * *

Tanya lifted her right foot and ran her finger between her heel and the strap of her sandal. She felt a puffy spot and looked closer to see if she was developing a blister. A hand touched hers, and the weight in her left hand—a delicate wine glass—was lifted away. She dropped her foot back to the ground and looked over quickly.

"You were spilling," Rain said quietly.

Tanya flushed, took her glass back, and glowered at their associates, daring them to laugh at her.

Princess Kitana looked at her placidly. Jade—her servant of some sort—was watching Rain. Tanya cocked her head haughtily and took a sip. She looked better than either of them, anyway. Her dress was golden silk, clinging from the bust to the knees, then flaring gently into ripples. It cut a shallow _v_ in the back and a plunging one in the front, framing the large aquamarine settled between Tanya's breasts, brilliant against her copper skin. When the four had first met earlier that evening, near the beginning of the monthly high-class courtyard party, Jade had calmly asked Tanya if she had put her dress on backwards. Tanya was still mad.

Of course, that might have had less to do with Jade's comment than the attention she was paying to Rain. Jade was rarely at such parties, and Tanya was irritated that she seemed to think that Kitana's bringing her to this one meant she had the right to come.

They were talking about something boring and harmless that Kitana had brought up, something that no one would care they were talking about. Tanya hadn't been paying much attention, but she thought it was mostly about being Edenian. How exciting! She'd never been Edenian before!

"I really think the treatment we received as children was preferential," Kitana said.

Well, of course, Tanya thought with a discreet eye-roll. She was the _princess_.

Kitana continued earnestly. "It was we young children left alive after our realm fell who rose in the ranks, who became trusted servants and not just lackeys." She made a fist with the gloved hand not holding a wine glass and shook it slightly in time with what she was saying. Tanya looked away from her and gave a more defined eye roll. Terrible performance. She was overdoing it. Far too much dressing, and Kitana never talked with her hands except at awkward social gatherings.

"And you think this is because of the way we were treated as children?" Rain asked.

Now, Rain had a way of being sincere about everything. Tanya smiled up at him.

"Well, it almost has to be," Kitana replied. "The rebels have never been us. The rebels are the adults who were left alive after our realm fell and those who have been born since. If you exclude characteristics common to both us and either one of those groups, there aren't many variables left."

Rain took a sip of wine. "You have proof of this?"

"We have a lot of data," Jade said. "If you'd come with me, I could show you right away."

Tanya scowled and moved a sidestep closer to Rain. That was the second time Jade had tried to get alone with Rain. Who did she think she was?

"The older rebels," Kitana said, "will try to tell you that Master Kahn's presence imbues everyone with some sort of mystical need for his presence, or some sort of...happy spell to keep his servants loyal. Utter nonsense, of course." She looked around. Jade and Rain nodded in unison. Tanya, reluctantly, nodded, too. The conversation was becoming less safe and less boring and completely inappropriate for the setting and audience.

"If it were a spell on everybody," Kitana continued, "the older rebels would be affected, and they wouldn't be rebels, would they?" She laughed thinly. "So then, they try to tell you that it only affects those who are very young. But, surely, that would include all those who were born after he came." Kitana gave the same weak laugh. "And yet, young rebels are much more common than old rebels."

"Hey!" Tanya glanced over her shoulder then back to Kitana. "Just because you were born after Master Kahn came doesn't mean you're a dirty traitor," she hissed. "I take great offense at any accusations that my loyalties lie—"

Rain grabbed her hand and patted it. "She wasn't accusing you."

Kitana looked Tanya over, and Tanya stood straighter, wishing she had picked taller heels. "You were born after our realm fell?" Kitana asked.

What was that supposed to mean? Tanya took _great_ care of her skin.

"Yeah, I was," Tanya said petulantly.

"Oh, well—" Kitana turned to Rain. "—how did she rise so far?"

Rain shrugged. "She has her ways."

Jade snorted. "Don't you ever get tired of that?"

Tanya quickly looked up at Rain's face. He raised an eyebrow but said nothing. She breathed deeply, resisting the urge to stamp her feet. They were _flirting_! Rain was flirting, and it wasn't with her! She tried to breathe slowly and evenly, but her breath quickened. It wasn't that Tanya was worried that Rain would want something different. It was just that Jade's skin was so very much like hers. She pulled her hand out of Rain's grasp and grabbed his arm with both hands, rubbing his shoulder and pressing her entire body against his side.

"You were saying, Princess?" Rain asked.

"Oh, yes," Kitana said, "the younger rebels. They're spurred on by the stories of their parents and imagine Edenia as it was as some sort of utopia, when all it really was was a world like any other—chaotic and weak and desperately needing the very thing it feared so badly."

"Master Kahn," Rain said.

"Master Kahn," Kitana agreed reverently.

They all toasted him.

"To Master Kahn's flawless plan," Rain said.

"It is flawless, this time, is it?" Kitana asked smoothly, her voice lowered. She raised an eyebrow as she took another sip of wine.

"So they claim," Rain said. "But, then, we all know how Shang Tsung likes to sing his own praises."

They all laughed.

"You know, we haven't heard much," Jade said lowly, both in pitch and volume, edging closer to Rain. Tanya pulled on his arm in alarm. "As a general, I'm sure you know much more than we do." Jade cocked her head and smiled.

"Well, you see, Jade," Rain said, "if I told you, that would be telling, wouldn't it?"

Jade and Rain looked at each other for a few seconds, then burst out laughing.

It was Rain's fake laugh. Tanya relaxed a bit. Half a second later, she stiffened. Maybe he _was_ flirting. Maybe his fake laugh was for flirting. Maybe he had never flirted with her. Tanya bit her lip.

"Oh, I don't know much," Rain said when he had finished laughing. "I could quote you Master Kahn's entire speech."

"Oh, really?" Kitana asked. "Could you?"

Rain shrugged almost imperceptibly. He might have been stopped by the weight Tanya was putting on his arm. She loosened her grip a little.

"'Prepare your armies,'" Rain said, "'and prepare them well. We're going to take the Earth Realm.'"

"That's all?" Kitana asked.

"Not very enlightening, I agree," Rain said. "This is unofficial, but considering the forces we're preparing, I think we're invading."

"Are we?" Kitana asked incredulously. "How? We keep _losing_ Mortal Kombat."

Rain took a sip of wine. "Does it involve your mother?"

Tanya looked up at him, startled. Had that been a note of _concern_ in his voice?

Jade suddenly had a crease between her eyebrows; Kitana looked stricken.

Tanya pulled harder on Rain's arm.

* * *

Lundiy returned from the nearest market with a large bag full of supplies for their journey. During the long hours walking, the twine of the bag's handles had dug into her fingers. She was glad to set it down, finally, on the table in front of the unresponsive murderess.

Mistral was packing a small box with gold. She wedged in a golden, dancing monkey with emeralds for eyes and shut the lid. "That's it. All the gold of our clan."

"What about silver?" asked Lundiy. "And gems? We seem to have a lot of those."

"I packed them first."

Lundiy gave her a look. "Before the gold?"

"Yes, before the gold."

"Why? I mean gold is more valuable."

"That—" Mistral put her hand on her hip and sounded thoroughly annoyed. "—is what the texts say to do. They indicate we should take silver to Yanxubin, and gems to augment the silver, and take the gold if we have room for it."

"That's just really strange," Lundiy said. She picked up a small pile of paper bills. "Is this all our money?" she asked, alarmed.

"No. That is for bus tickets."

"Bus tickets? We get to take a bus?"

"To Salta. Where we take the train."

"We can't take a train to China," Lundiy said, placing the bills back on the table. "You do realize that, right?"

Lundiy didn't have to wait for the look Mistral gave her to back off. "Do you want to see what I bought us for our trip?" she asked.

Mistral didn't answer. Lundiy pulled a lump of clothing out of the sack. "I have skirts for all of us, and blouses for all of us, and scarves to cover our hair—especially hers, you know? Oh! And—" Lundiy reached into the bottom of the bag and pulled out her final purchase. "Sunglasses. To cover her eyes." The sunglasses were large and mirrored. Lundiy put them on to demonstrate.

The white-eyed woman at the table snarled and leapt at Lundiy. Lundiy shrieked and raised her hands in self-defense.

Mistral reacted instantly. She kicked out with one of her long legs, barely catching the woman just below the hip but still managing enough force to throw her off course. The woman stumbled to the side, away from Mistral, then rounded on her, cocking her arm back high above her head before throwing an open-handed strike at Mistral's jaw. Mistral caught her wrist with her left hand, rocking to the side from the force of the blow. She twisted the woman's wrist and kicked her again—a sturdy side kick that pushed the smaller woman away so their hands broke apart. Lundiy saw three bleeding lines along the back of Mistral's hand—deep gouges from the woman's nails.

Mistral stood tall, four feet from the woman, as Lundiy tried to back away discreetly, not wanting to draw the woman's attention. She noticed for the first time how much Mistral dwarfed the woman, who had rather stubby limbs. If Mistral could only keep her at a distance, she couldn't possibly lose.

The woman leaned forward and blew a kiss at Mistral. Lundiy froze in horror as a puff of blue smoke shot from the woman's mouth and smashed into Mistral's stomach, throwing her backward across the room. Mistral crumpled as she hit the floor. She twitched a leg out, kicking a chair, but did not rise.

The woman turned to Lundiy and bent forward again. Lundiy couldn't move. She could only wait for the woman's dark magic to hit her as it had hit Mistral. But the woman didn't blow a kiss, and no blue smoke came.

She screamed.

Her scream was louder and more piercing—higher-pitched—than her hysterical shrieks had been. The sound seemed to penetrate to Lundiy's brain, and when she began to move forward, feet skidding along the ground beneath stiff legs, Lundiy couldn't even widen her eyes in shock. She was paralyzed by something even stronger than fear as the woman's fingers wrapped around her neck, sharp fingernails cutting into tender flesh.

The spell finally broke, and Lundiy collapsed. The woman's weight was on her as she fell, pushing her down harder. Her head bounced off the ground and hit again with a smaller, but more painful, smack.

Lundiy's vision was going black, and her lungs burned for air.

How many seconds until death?

She clenched her jaw, scrunched up her nose, made a fist with her right hand, and slammed it into the side of the woman's head. The woman tumbled off her, and Lundiy felt a stinging pain on her neck as the woman's nails took strips of flesh with them.

She gasped for breath. Every one tore through her throat, more painful than the strangulation had been. Lundiy felt a strange pressure on her nose and reached up with trembling hands, only to encounter hard plastic. She pulled the sunglasses off and folded them, then slowly climbed to her knees.

The woman was on hers, her head bowed, her hands on her face. She let out a sob. Lundiy tottered to her feet. She heard Mistral stir behind her. The woman sobbed uncontrollably as Lundiy hobbled over to Mistral and reached down to help her up. The movement almost caused her to fall, setting off a chain reaction of balance failures for both women that Lundiy imagined would have been funny to watch. In no less than thirty seconds, both women were steady on their feet. The only witness to their impromptu slapstick comedy had begun to moan in the old language between sobs.

Lundiy and Mistral watched her for a time, then turned to each other. Without a word, Mistral began to straighten up the table.

* * *

Enmity lay on her back on the incline of Yen Sa's roof, her head to the sky. She propped her torso up on her elbows and watched for any signs of after-hours, top-secret technological development. She had returned to the inside of the company that morning, less concerned about being conspicuous than the last time—less concerned than she probably should have been. The only person who had seemed to recognize her was the front desk secretary, who had smiled shyly and offered her coffee. Scribbling details on her clipboard as she toured the facility, no one seemed to think her out of place, and many of the scientists had answered questions about what they were doing, though some had deflected her more probing questions with smiles and 'I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you'. She had forced smiles at them and excused herself quickly.

Her work—most likely—was done. The technology was simple to categorize, though most was far above her head. Electronics and robotics and the programming needed to run each. The most interesting and least prevalent technologies had been biomedical, and these she had been able to ask the best questions about—she had a great deal of experience with the body and what could go wrong. All assassins did.

She drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. He was still there, of course. Sub-Zero. He had come just after the last straggling employees had left. She thought his behavior was highly unusual. He ought to have been at home, with his family, eating, doing chores, training, or even sleeping by now. Instead he was conversing with the front desk secretary again. Yen Sa himself had stopped in, shortly, before returning to his office to finish up business for the day. But she wouldn't report it. Sub-Zero was rumored to be a remarkable scientist, with a mythical touch, but if he were there to develop technology, he wouldn't be sitting in the kitchen eating ice cream.

She breathed deeply again, a silent sigh. There were many hours left until sunrise.

* * *

"So then I said, 'Does it say anything about me, the tragically ill and phenomenally brilliant but not entirely dorkish, you know...'" Yuan paused. "Boyfriend. And he told me to leave. Is that a yes or a no?"

"I think your use of that word only proves that you are. Entirely," said Biao Ying Xi, leaning on the kitchen table with her chin in her hand.

"Huh?" Yuan asked.

Ying Xi sat up a little and dropped her hand onto the table. "Dorkish."

"Oh."

Yen Mulan sat down next to Ying Xi. "I thought you said you were going to go talk to the grandmaster if your master didn't."

Yuan scoffed. "I was bluffing. I like life."

"Oh, I see," Mulan said, exchanging a knowing look with Ying Xi. He hated when they did that. Secret girl language.

He took another bite of ice cream. "I really do need to talk to your father about all this," he said through his mouthful.

"He'll be back," Mulan answered.

"Thank you for the ice cream," Yuan added. "This has been a very stressful day for me."

"You don't seem so terribly upset now," Mulan commented dryly.

Yuan shrugged and slapped the bowl of his spoon against his ice cream. "There are worse things to find out about your family than that you're royalty."

"I guess," said Ying Xi. She sounded a little put off.

"Oh, don't be like that," he said. "I won't be any worse about being royalty than Mulan is about being rich."

"So how will you be about being rich?" Mulan asked, raising an eyebrow at him.

"I don't think I am, actually," Yuan mused. He slurped some melted ice cream. "We don't really have that much. A few strange things that are probably pretty valuable that my parents would never sell, but our treasures aren't really the gold and jewelry kind."

"Still," Ying Xi said, "it must be nice. To be special, not just a part of boring old Yanxubin."

"No, see," Yuan said, dropping his spoon, "you missed the point. Yanxubin may _seem_ boring, but that's all just a smokescreen. You both have power just like mine and all the ninjas in town. You just don't know how to use it. We're all special mage-warriors. And aliens from outer space," he added, picking up his spoon to take the final bite.

The girls laughed. "Oh, right," Ying Xi said.

Mulan covered her face with her hands. "I think it's all ridiculous," she said.

"Well, yeah," Yuan said. "That's because it _is_. It just so happens to be true, is all."

"Yuan," Mulan said cautiously, "are you sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure," he said, irritated. "My mother told me, and Smoke. Do you even think Smoke has an imagination to make this sort of thing up?"

"But don't you think maybe they were lied to?" asked Ying Xi.

"It happened during their lives!" The handle of Yuan's spoon clattered on the rim of his bowl. "You think they hallucinated it all?"

"Yuan, I think you're being—" began Mulan.

"Besides," he interrupted, "it really explains everything."

A fourth voice spoke. "And it is true."

Yuan turned toward the kitchen door. Mr. Yen was holding a file folder, looking idly through it.

"See?" Yuan said. "I told you."

Mulan turned away from him, looking hurt.

Mr. Yen closed the folder. "I think we might all object to being called 'aliens from outer space', but everything else is true."

"I still don't believe it," Ying Xi said quietly.

"You have to admit it sounds insane," Mulan said, sullenly.

"It doesn't to me, but then I grew up knowing all this," Mr. Yen said.

"And you were one of these special honor guards, too, huh?" Yuan asked.

"I was, yes," Mr. Yen said.

"Really?" asked Mulan. She sounded less upset.

Mr. Yen nodded.

"Then you'll understand, right?" asked Yuan.

Mr. Yen set his folder on the table. "Understand what, Yuan?"

"Shao Kahn. Mostly the bit where he needs to die now so we can have our home back."

Mulan gave her father an apologetic look. Yuan ignored her.

Mr. Yen drew a deep breath. "Yuan. Mandalore is gone, and I don't think anything we can do would allow me to see it again."

Yuan tapped his fingers on the table. "Channeling Smoke, are you?"

"No. Generally never." Mr. Yen paused. "Look, if we had tried to get Mandalore back, where do you think we would be?"

Yuan looked down at the table and didn't answer him.

"Well?"

"Starving," Yuan mumbled.

"Exactly. If we spend all our efforts trying to bring back the past, we lose the present as well. All we can do is try to make the present better." Mr. Yen sat down beside Yuan. "Why don't you try that instead of questing."

"I think you are going a little overboard with this, Yuan," Mulan said quietly. Ying Xi nodded.

Yuan sighed. "That war really defeated all of you, didn't it?"

"I didn't fight in a war," Mulan said.

"You know what I meant," he snapped at her, then turned back to Mr. Yen. "Where's the fighting spirit? You had to have had it once, or you wouldn't still be alive."

"Yuan." Mr. Yen held his hands up, palms out. "We lost Mandalore." His voice was quiet, but intense. "We didn't lose it because we lost the fight. We lost it because we _fought_ the fight. We fought the wrong fight, and we lost our world." Mr. Yen jabbed his finger at the floor. "We have to live _here_, in this village, because the only alternative is to die here. We loved Mandalore, and we kept all we had of it—"

"You kept all you had of it?" Yuan was on his feet. "A few things shoved into an attic, and a language only one village can speak? While you pretend you're not Mandalorian?" He placed his hands on the table and leaned on them, looking Mr. Yen in the face. "What about the essence of Mandalore? What made Mandalorians who they were? I live in a village entirely populated by them, and I don't even know who these people are."

"Yuan." Mr. Yen stood, too, stepped around Yuan, and gently righted his chair. "Calm down. My memories of Mandalore are not all shoved into an attic. We are still Mandalorians, as much as we can be, but think about what would happen if we tried to go further. We certainly can't go around teaching our children magic unless we want to be rounded up and studied, now can we?"

"I'm sorry," Yuan grouched as he sat down and crossed his arms. "I just—"

Mulan held the ice cream tub out at him warily. He shook his head.

"You're frustrated," Mr. Yen said. "It's understandable. But I can't tell you in a nutshell what a Mandalorian is. Being one, I don't have the right perspective. Believe it or not, you don't have that perspective either." Mr. Yen pointed at Yuan emphatically. "You can pick at the surface and compare us to anything you'd like, but you don't want the surface. Everything you want to know about us, you already know, whether you realize it or not. Now, is there anything else I can help you with, or did you just come here to accuse me of apathy?"

Yuan leaned back into his chair and sighed. Reluctantly, he said, "The strangest things I found of my parents were some gloves. They had electronics in them, but no power source, and this weird, coin-sized opening." He made a little circle with his thumb and index finger and held it up.

Mr. Yen smiled a little strangely. "Ah, yes, that was for a sunstone."

"A sunstone?" Yuan perked up a little.

"We used them for lighting. They were the simplest and most universal application of our power. They were just quartz," Mr. Yen added dismissively.

"Quartz. Not light bulbs."

"Oh, we didn't have electricity in buildings." Mr. Yen leaned against the table. "Just spaceships."

Ying Xi burst out laughing. "I'm sorry," she said. She giggled.

So did Mulan. "Spaceships," she repeated.

Yuan, annoyed, said a little loudly, "Lin Kuei headquarters is in one."

The girls quieted instantly.

"Yes," Mr. Yen said looking over his shoulder at the girls, "the only remaining one. That's what most of the survivors came through the portal in. Your mother had a personal ship." Mr. Yen turned to Yuan. "It was blown up during the war, though."

"So you had electricity, but you limited it to spaceships and gloves," Yuan said. "That doesn't make any sense."

"It does if you can only have electricity on spaceships." Mr. Yen raised an eyebrow slightly and looked at Yuan, waiting.

Yuan thought for a moment. "The engines were the only generators?"

Mr. Yen nodded. "And it wasn't even Mandalorian technology. It was Edenian technology, and rather ancient by the time I was born."

"Then the gloves—"

"Weren't run by electricity." Mr. Yen gave that same strange smile. "They were run by our inner power."

"Then they were Mandalorian technology."

"Just about the only Mandalorian technology," Mr. Yen said. "And the first big success of Yen Sa Enterprises." Mr. Yen tilted his head. "We weren't incorporated then."

Yuan started laughing. "So what are they?"

"Light swords made by our own innate energy and shaped by our own minds. Very sophisticated. Ahead of their time. Almost didn't catch on." Mr. Yen was also laughing. The girls were looking at them like they really were aliens from outer space. Yuan didn't care.

"Well, did they work?" he asked.

"Of course they worked," said Mr. Yen, a little defensively.

Yuan sat up. "You could cut people's arms off and through metal swords, and stuff?"

"Metal, no. People's arms, yes."

"How's that?" Yuan asked quickly. "A laser—"

Mr. Yen cut him off just as quickly. "These weren't lasers, Yuan. They weren't anything modern Earth science could come up with. They were powered by us, extensions of us, so they couldn't hurt us, only others. Cutting something nonliving was almost impossible. There was no...reaction, I guess."

"Then why were they so successful?" Yuan asked. "Even metal swords can break other metal swords."

"And if they couldn't break them," Mulan said, "they couldn't block them, right?"

"Very true, Mulan," Mr. Yen said. "When I said they were ahead of their time, what I really meant was that I began—and finished—developing them before we actually needed them."

"Which was when?" asked Yuan.

"During the war. We had some enemies—the elite ones—who fought with light swords. Light swords that _would_ cut through metal swords. As it turned out, our light swords could counter their light swords, and we fought like we were using ordinary weapons."

Ying Xi giggled again. "Sorry," she said. "It's like a cartoon."

Mr. Yen smiled and shrugged.

"Were these warriors mystical in any way?" Yuan asked.

"Hmm, yes," Mr. Yen said. "They had telekinetic powers and maybe some more abilities. Not element-based, something else. But their weapons weren't mystical," he added quickly. "Anyone could use one. Maybe not well, but they could use them. Only Mandalorians could have used ours, though not easily without training and customizations."

"They weren't interchangeable, then?" Yuan asked. "You couldn't have used my mother's?"

"No, I could have," Mr. Yen said. "It just would have been harder. You had to shape the weapon with your mind, and subconsciously move it yourself." He demonstrated with his hands. "I put mirrors in to direct the light and make it easier. Your mother used a different sort of weapon than I did, so her mirror configuration was different from mine."

"Neat." Mulan smiled.

Yuan nodded absently for a moment. "And they were really the first things you ever made?"

"Oh, no." Mr. Yen shook his head. "I was toying with powering electronics with sunstones for ages before that. This was just—_the_ project. The big one."

"The one you're still proud of."

"My big contribution to the war."

"You'd have lost otherwise, wouldn't you?" Yuan asked.

"Yuan, I think we lost anyway." He paused. "But, yes, we wouldn't have stood a chance otherwise."

"You were the big hero," Mulan said proudly.

"Well," Mr. Yen gave a weak smile, "not really. More the behind-the-scenes tech guy that helped the hero."

Mulan put one hand on her hip. "So you were Q, not James Bond."

Mr. Yen shrugged.

"Then who was James Bond?"

Mr. Yen shrugged again. "All the rest of them, I guess."

"Well, I'll tell you who wasn't James Bond, right?" Yuan said. "My father."

Mr. Yen laughed. "He was the general of Mandalore's armies."

"That's not James Bond." Yuan looked to Mulan for confirmation.

She nodded. "That's anti-James Bond."

"He was the just the guy who approved the equipment that you made, huh?" Yuan said.

"He fought a lot," Mr. Yen said, "and he fought very well. Better than me. But he didn't approve the light swords the first time."

Yuan shook his head. "Figures."

"Now, to be fair," Mr. Yen said, "the demonstration was disastrous, and we didn't have a need for them."

"But still. Come on." Yuan leaned back. "The guy's a lightning elemental, and he doesn't see the beauty of electronic gloves?"

"Well, just because your father understood the power of electricity didn't mean he understood the finesse," Mr. Yen said. "Basically he knew that metal conducts it and a lot of it will kill you. I understood the finesse. I suppose I had to. Light is not inherently deadly." Mr. Yen chuckled.

"Light, huh?" Yuan said. "So that's why—"

"All my electronics were light-based, yes."

"I suppose you can't call them electronics, then," Yuan said. "They were photonics. Yen Sa Photonics." He leaned back in his chair. "Makes the ignorant think of photographs, though."

"And it sounds silly if you expand and only a small branch of your company still works with the original idea." Mr. Yen crossed his arms.

"Well, you thought big." Yuan grinned.

So did Mr. Yen.

"If you're light, Dad," Mulan said, "then what am I?"

"Adopted," Yuan said. Mulan reached across the table and hit him on the shoulder.

"I'd guess gravity," Mr. Yen said.

"Oh, that's strange," Mulan said.

Ying Xi laughed, a little hysterically.

"What about her?" Mulan asked, grabbing her by the shoulders.

Mr. Yen thought for a moment, shaking his head. "Earth?" he said hesitantly.

"I don't think I have one," Ying Xi said hurriedly, looking at the floor. "I don't have any powers."

"Of course you do," Mulan said. "Your brother does."

"I always thought he was special to be in the Lin Kuei." Ying Xi rubbed her hands together.

"Mostly just male," Yuan said.

"I'll get a sunstone," Mr. Yen said, "and we'll show you."

Ying Xi shook her head.

"Oh, don't be ridiculous. It's easy. Toddlers can do it." Mr. Yen stood up.

When he had left the room, Ying Xi stood up, too. "Well, I think I should leave," she said.

"Oh, you're not going anywhere," Yuan said. "You're going to believe this before the night is up, or I'll single-handedly stop the sun from rising."

"How, exactly?" asked Mulan.

"I haven't figured that out yet. Let's just say, it would be radical, so it'd better not need to happen." Yuan gave Ying Xi a stern look.

She sat down reluctantly. Mulan gave her another secret-girl-language glance. "I'll do it first," she said. "If I can't, then you don't have to try."

"Do you think you'll be able to light it?" asked Yuan.

"I think," Mulan said slowly, "I have." Ying Xi looked at her, alarmed.

Mr. Yen returned, holding a small, semi-clear stone. "You ready?"

Mulan shrugged. Ying Xi shook her head.

"How's it work?" Yuan asked.

"Simple." Mr. Yen held up the stone. "You just concentrate on the stone, and think about making it light." The stone in his hand glowed, emitting a warm, soft light.

Mulan clapped her hands. "I _have_ done this before," she said excitedly. "When I was little. The big stone in your office." She turned and grinned at Yuan. "Scared me to death. I thought I imagined it."

Mr. Yen let the stone's glow die and handed it to her. She held it up so it rested on an open palm in front of her face. A second later it began to glow again. "I feel kind of tingly," she said.

"It's using a very small amount of your energy to glow. You'll get used to it. Eventually you'll have to concentrate to actually let one stop rather than to keep it going."

The stone's light faltered and died. Mulan handed it to Ying Xi. She took it carefully, as though she were expecting it to be hot. She held it up as Mulan had, gave Yuan a weak glance, then looked at the stone. When it lit, she dropped it and jumped backward.

She rubbed her hand. "You did that," she said to Mr. Yen, "didn't you?"

He was laughing. "No. That was you. I told you it was easy."

"Your hand's tingling, isn't it?" Mulan asked.

Ying Xi looked at her hands as if they were foreign to her. "I think I need to go home now," she said evenly.

"I'll drive you," Mulan said, taking her elbow and guiding her out the door. As they exited the room, she gave Yuan a smile over her shoulder.

He smiled back.

"I think she'll be better in the morning," Mr. Yen said.

Yuan wasn't thinking about his friends. He leaned back in his chair again and looked up at Mr. Yen. "So not only was my mother the queen, my father was the general."

"Well," Mr. Yen said, "queens don't marry just anybody."

"No," Yuan said, startled. "I mean, no wonder everyone hates my family. They were _everybody_'s bosses."

Mr. Yen shrugged and picked up his folder. "Good night, Yuan."

Yuan watched him leave. "They aren't anymore, though," he murmured.


	6. Chapter Six

**Transposition**  
by Nyohah

**Chapter Six**

* * *

Two o'clock in the morning at the Li residence in Yanxubin, China. Yuan Li pulled a red wooden egg-shaped doll out of a box in his closet. The _daruma_ doll was brand new but had a weight to it that made it seem more authentic than any of the few others he had seen in his life. No one in Yanxubin was Buddhist, and _daruma_ dolls were a Japanese thing, anyway.

He knew the egg shape was meant to be a monk's head, whose eyes were currently just circles of white. He was supposed to paint in one of the eyes and make a wish. When the wish was granted, the other eye would appear.

He set the doll on the floor in the center of his room and shrugged. He grabbed a permanent marker (it would do), and quickly drew an eye. It wasn't quite round and a little off center, but the spirit of the thing was intact.

"Okay," he sighed. He grabbed a book off his shelf—_Navigation and the Fifth Dimension: Avoiding Disorientation in a Worm Hole_—and sat cross-legged in front of the doll to wait.

* * *

Four o'clock in the morning at the Li residence in Yanxubin, China. A crack of thunder rang through the house.

Li Yuen Ming sat straight up, angry words coming out of her mouth before she even fully realized she was awake.

"Don't know what you think you're doing this time of night, Wei—"

Her husband snored. Ming's heart beat a little faster as she hurriedly slipped out of bed and across the hall to her younger son's room.

"Yuan?" She rapped lightly on the door.

"Uh, yeah?" He sounded a little dazed.

"Are you all right?"

"Oh, sure. Just fine, Mom." His voice still sounded distracted.

She slowly opened the door.

A circle of carpet in the middle of the room was charred, tendrils of smoke drifting up from it. A red-painted egg rocked slowly back and forth in the middle of the circle. Her son sat between his bed and the circle, eyes wide, a book in his lap.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"Nothing," he defended unconvincingly.

"This doesn't look like nothing, Yuan," she said. "You could have been hurt."

"I didn't do it!" He stretched his arms, palm up, toward the doll. "I mean—it's supposed to get an eye, not blow up."

"Yuan," she sighed, "what are you doing?"

"I," he answered firmly, "am making today better."

"By eschewing sleep?"

"No." He stood up, brushing himself off. "I was contacting Rayden. But I seem to be finished now, so I'll be going."

"Rayden?" she asked, startled.

"Yes, Mom." Yuan stood up a little straighter. "I think we might need the help of the other Warriors of Light soon, so I thought it would be prudent to contact him now, so he can have time to gather them and work around his elemental-god bureaucracy or whatever."

"Oh," Ming said. "Why?"

"Because we're going to Outworld, and we're going to rescue Ching."

"We are?"

"Well, probably not you," he said, "and probably not anyone else who has told me today that there's no hope. But, see—" he waved his finger at her admonishingly, and she couldn't help but smile, "—I've been thinking about it, and I don't think you honor guard survivors have the right perspective on this. You're the ones who are stuck in the past, because you can't get over how badly you were beaten, but this time, we have the advantage here—"

"Yuan, I'd like to help," she said.

"Oh." He seemed surprised. "I've started contacting people I know can help, but, you know, being the queen and all, maybe you can help persuade some of the people in town. Mr. Yen. Smoke. I don't know of anybody else, but you could help me there, too."

"Your father?" she asked.

"Oh, right. Him, too." Yuan looked at her for a moment then continued his directives as though uninterrupted. "My instinct is to get more information from you, but it would be rather out of date, whereas I've been to Outworld pretty recently, so I think my own experiences are more relevant. One thing, though." He stopped suddenly and picked the book up off the floor.

"Yes, Yuan?"

"You said the guy who made the portal was a gravity elemental?"

She clasped her hands together fiercely. "Yes."

Yuan smiled, hugged her, and rushed out the door. "I'll be at Mulan's," he shouted as he went down the stairs.

* * *

Kitana wove her fingers together nervously and waited as Jade looked over her shoulder one last time, then turned back to Kitana.

"We're alone," she said.

They set off down the mirrored corridor. It was one of the few areas, like the vine courtyard, merged unchanged from the Edenian palace to Kahn's fortress. Unlike the vine courtyard, it was undefiled, an oasis of light and resplendence in the dungeon-like tower. Kitana liked it best for aesthetic reasons, but Jade had chosen it for the way the mirrors were specially angled to reflect images of objects in the corridor farther along it than quiet sounds traveled.

"It's a shame we couldn't get to Rain," Kitana said. "I don't know if he's actually sincere about all that Kahn-worshipping we did, or if he just fakes it like we do."

"It's Tanya that's the problem," Jade said.

"Well, I don't think she's entirely sincere about the Kahn-worshipping either," Kitana said, "but she's sincere about liking her place in his court."

"Yes," Jade said slowly, "but I meant that Tanya's the problem with Rain."

"Oh." Kitana laughed once, embarrassed. "Yes, of course. We need some way to untangle her from him before we can even begin to test the waters."

"No power, immortal or otherwise, can manage that one," Jade muttered.

"No." Kitana stopped. "Rain can. I mean, she doesn't always tag along when he's working, and that's got to be Rain's decision."

"It's not hers," Jade agreed cattily.

"No," Kitana said, with a small laugh, continuing down the corridor. "But it must be that if he tells her to stay, she stays."

"So he could get away to come without her," Jade said flatly, following, "if we could find a way to ask him to come when she's not there."

Kitana sighed. "You're right. That won't happen."

"It's not your fault," Jade said. "She's like some kind of mutated Hydra. You chop one of her arms off, and she grows another one to cling with."

"Still," Kitana said, folding her hands together and extending her index fingers to make a steeple, "she's not always around when he's working. She wouldn't be around if there were Shadow Priests or mutants."

"He couldn't let her," Jade agreed, "or he'd lose their respect and be eviscerated."

"But speaking to him in front of either of those groups would be worse than speaking to him in front of Tanya." Kitana shook her head.

"The Shadow Priests are in the palace," Jade said, "but the mutants are in the wasteland. It's a day's journey."

"Then that's what we have to do." Kitana stopped and turned to Jade. "Next time he goes to command the mutants, you have to follow him."

Jade nodded once.

They walked in silence for a few moments, their footsteps thudding softly on the carpet.

"I wish that were our only problem with Rain," Kitana sighed.

"How did he know about your mother?" Jade asked.

"I'm not sure he actually knows anything, but even his suspicion raises some disturbing questions." Kitana shook her head and slowly let out her breath. "I knew because I saw her. I wonder if he knows where she is now. Or that she's thoroughly, thoroughly evil."

"If we really are invading Earth," Jade said, "is she the reason we can?"

Kitana stopped. Her reflection caught her eye, and she turned to it. She saw two tall, slender young women with identical features, distinguishable only by their skin color. The lighter-skinned of the two stared solemnly back at her. The darker-skinned woman looked curiously at the lighter-skinned.

Just a girl and her clone, Kitana thought. Normal as a breath in a world where life was a binding contract to demons and death a momentary inconvenience.

"I don't know," Kitana said, finally, her voice hoarse. "But I can't imagine there's any other reason they would bring her back."

Jade began to walk again. Kitana took one last look at her reflection, then joined her.

"We've definitely got Reptile on our side, though?" Kitana asked with difficulty.

"If he wasn't," Jade said, "we'd be dead by now."

"Good point."

The corridor ended. "There's one thing, though," Jade whispered urgently, nodding her head in the direction of Kitana's room. They forced themselves to amble the short distance to the door. Kitana opened it as nonchalantly as she could manage.

Inside, Jade spoke quickly. "I—I haven't said anything yet because I wasn't sure if I had any grounds to believe it, but it's been bothering me since—keeping me awake at night."

"What?" Kitana asked. She backed to one of the chairs in her sitting room and sat down. Something crinkled. She reached down and shifted her weight to pull the paper-wrapped package from beneath her.

"It was when I spoke to Reptile," Jade said. "He went to the wrong spot, and I had to go find him. On the way, I think I may have picked up a tail."

Kitana almost dropped the package. "How is that even possible?"

Jade shook her head. "I don't know. But that's not the worrying part. I couldn't see anybody. Just a shadow."

"You were scared by a shadow?" Kitana asked.

"That's what I've been saying to myself," Jade said with a nervous laugh. "It's ridiculous. But—there was nothing around that could have made that shadow, and I do think I heard it as well, following me."

"But what was it?" Kitana nervously picked at the paper wrapping of the package on her lap. "Was it a spirit? Shadow's don't move on their own."

"I'm afraid this Demon Master may have servants we've never heard—_what's that_?" Jade pointed to Kitana's lap.

Kitana looked down. She picked up part of the contents of the package, a small bit of dark blue silk with dangling laces, and stood up. The rest of the package fell to the floor with a thud, an even smaller bit of dark blue silk fluttering gracefully down a half second after the rest of it.

"Is this Tanya's?" Kitana asked in disbelief. She couldn't really tell what it was, but it wasn't quite clothing.

"She'd never wear that color," Jade said numbly. "That's your color." She picked two of the pieces of silk up from the ground. One was a mask, the other a glove. Her eyes widened, and she jumped through the wall.

Kitana held the blue silk up and tried to find its top. Jade was back before she had managed it, holding an identical confusion in brilliant green. Kitana finally got the outfit righted and held it up to herself in the mirror. She was used to wearing leotards to fight in, but this leotard was missing a good chunk of its front—a _v_ that put Tanya's party dress to shame. It was, she felt, a measure of the outfit's skimpiness that she felt grateful for the laces that would at least serve to keep it from falling off.

"New outfits," Jade said, still sounding shell-shocked.

"Oh," Kitana moaned. "If we hadn't already decided to rebel, this would be motive enough."

* * *

Six o'clock in the morning at the Hua residence in Yanxubin, China. Pounding interrupted Smoke's breakfast.

He got up and walked to the door, opening it to see the last person he expected to see so early in the morning. Yuan Li. But at least he knocked, Smoke thought with a sigh.

"What, Yuan?" he asked.

Yuan slipped by him and into the living room, stopping in the middle of the room. Smoke closed the door and took two steps toward him, intending to berate him.

"I just found your daughter's telephone number in Hong Kong," Yuan said, waving a yellow post-it note stuck to his finger. "Good thing Mr. Yen has such good connections, because I was rather indisposed when we met, so I didn't get a chance to ask her for it." Yuan quickly looked around the room. "You have a phone, right?" he asked suddenly.

"Yes," Smoke said, "but I'd like to know why you have her number."

"Well, I think I have it," Yuan said. "What's her name, for sure? I think I figured out who she was, but the only time we met, I was sort of dying, so I wasn't at my best."

"Her name was Hua Tung Mei," Smoke answered, gritting his teeth. "And I think you just may be redefining rude this morning."

"And she's married to Inspector Lau of the Hong Kong Police Department, so Lau Tung Mei." Yuan flicked the post-it note triumphantly. He looked at his watch. "Do you think she'll be mad if I call this early? Can I use your phone?" Without waiting for an answer, Yuan set off toward the kitchen. "Is it in here?"

"Yuan!" Smoke shouted.

But Yuan was gone. Smoke clenched his teeth and headed for the kitchen.

Yuan was on the phone. "May I speak to her, please? I'm a friend of her sister's." He looked up at Smoke. Smoke opened his mouth to speak, and Yuan held up a finger.

"Mrs. Lau?" he asked. He blinked and pulled the phone away from his ear a little. Smoke could hear a woman's voice loudly from the other side. "No, I—no, you see—just listen to me; she's not dead!" Yuan shouted into the phone with the earpiece well away from his head. He paused for a moment, then cautiously put the receiver back to his ear.

"Mrs. Lau?" he asked. After a moment he let out a deep breath. "Yes, you heard right. She's not dead, is the thing." He listened for a few seconds. "Well, I'm Yuan Li. I met her in Hong Kong. I was the scientist." He frowned a little as he listened. "No, I'm not dead either. It's, uh, kind of a long story." He laughed weakly.

"Yuan," Smoke said. "Get off the phone."

"Yes, they did," Yuan said, ignoring him. "Again. Well, I think it was one of his servants did the resurrecting this time, but the same basic group was responsible. She was very badly hurt, though, last I saw her." He leaned against the counter. "I'm pretty sure she's not dead. You know, again. But I am worried about her. That's why I called you. You're kind of a superhero, and I'm in need of as many superheroes as I can get." Yuan listened, carefully folding the post-it note. "Because we're going to rescue her."

Smoke exhaled slowly, shaking his head, and crossed his arms. Yuan looked up at him, and Smoke couldn't place the expression on his face. It wasn't apology, and it wasn't defiance.

"The problem is that she's not in this world," Yuan said. "She's in another world." Yuan listened for a moment, then smiled. "I knew you would. Oh? Well, yes, bring whoever you want. I've got another group coming, as well. The more the merrier." Yuan laughed at something she said. "Well, you're right, merrier probably isn't the appropriate terminology, but it's the odds that matter."

"Yuan," Smoke said.

Yuan ignored him again and shifted his weight. "Do you have a map? You'll need it. I'm in Yanxubin. It's in the northeast. Very small. It's off the beaten path, but you can get here."

Yuan smiled crookedly in response to something Tung said. "Yes, it is a silly name, but there's a reason for that." He attempted another couple of folds on the post-it note, held up a lopsided mess of an attempt at origami, and crumpled it up. "It would be easier to meet in Hong Kong, yes," Yuan said, "but there's another reason you'll want to come here. I'm actually standing in your father's house right now."

There was silence in the kitchen for a few seconds.

"Mrs. Lau?" Yuan asked. "Are you still there?"

Yuan waited, then grinned. "Yes, we look forward to seeing you as soon as you can get here."

Yuan hung up.

"What do you think you're doing?" Smoke asked, angrily.

"Calling in reinforcements," Yuan said. "And letting your daughter know where her family is."

"And what makes you think you can call up my daughter—" Smoke jabbed his finger at the phone, "—and tell her these things so insensitively?"

"That's a good question," Yuan said, standing up straight. "In fact, I'd say it's almost as good a question as why you never tried to find her, after you knew where she was." Yuan raised an eyebrow expectantly.

Smoke took a deep breath. "Yuan," he said sternly, "what do you think you're doing?"

"Isn't it obvious?" he said, raising his eyebrows. "As they say, if you want something done, you do it yourself."

"How many other people have you imposed that philosophy upon this morning?" Smoke asked.

Yuan took a step away from the counter. "I've done more to get Ching back in the last five hours than anyone else has bothered to do in the last five months."

"You decided to go to Outworld by yourself, did you?" Smoke said, stepping away from the counter, as well. He was between Yuan and the door. "Living isn't good enough for you, so you decided to try suicide."

"That wasn't what I meant, actually," Yuan said crossly. "If you don't like where you're being led, you should try your hand at leading."

Smoke raised his arms to the front and the sides, palms upward. "This is what you consider leading, Yuan?"

"I'm trying," Yuan said calmly. "I've never done it before, I know. But my mother's helping. She was a queen; she must know something about leading."

"Actually," Smoke said, lowering his arms, "it was really never her strong point."

Yuan shrugged. "Well, she's willing to help, and that's something." He gave Smoke an even look, then added, "Besides, Mr. Yen is helping, and you can't deny that he's pretty good at leading."

"So," Smoke said, slowly. "You went over there this morning to ask _him_ permission since you didn't like my advice, and he told you to go ahead?"

"No," Yuan said, "actually the first time I went over there—last night—he told me the same thing you did. But I decided that not only did I _not_ like that answer, I didn't have to accept it."

"So you went back to try to persuade him that he was wrong, and made some really convincing arguments?"

"No," Yuan said, crossing his arms, "I went back to see Mulan this morning, and we were making rather a lot of noise, so he came to investigate. Once he saw what we were doing, he asked how he could help. He started making phone calls, and that's how I got this." Yuan waved the crumpled post-it note.

"And what were you and Mulan doing?"

"Knocking things over, mostly. We were trying to figure out how to make a portal."

"Yuan, this is very foolish." Smoke tried to speak calmly, but his heart was racing in horror. "You're messing with things you don't understand, things that are very delicate and could be dangerous. I can't believe that your mother and Yen Sa of all people are going to allow you to do this. Are going to help you to do this."

"Yeah," Yuan said. "It looks like you're the only one I have to persuade to go save your daughter."

They looked each other in the eye for a few moments. Smoke was surprised to realize that Yuan wasn't angry. He wasn't even bitter. He was disappointed, and almost as close to tears as Smoke was.

"Now, if you'll excuse me," Yuan said, finally, "I'm kind of busy." He stepped around Smoke and left.

Smoke took a wobbly step toward the counter and leaned against it weakly.

* * *

The world was fading around her. Solidity and cool, dark colors, fleeting and insubstantial. Ching grabbed for them mentally—physically? She did not know, but she grabbed desperately.

The world was fading in.

The sharp corners of the room around her and the feel of the bed under her came and went in gentle pulses, like ocean waves as the tide came in. It happened every so often, and it was no cause for hope—she had no hope—for it seemed to be set on a predetermined cycle so that her master did not have to concentrate on her torment, only to reset it every few hours—days? Longer?

The world would come on its own, she knew, if it came at all. She had no control. But grabbing gave her something to concentrate on, something other than all the horrible things she'd done, witnessed, heard of, feared.

The world pulsed again, and it was like a sudden eclipse, the dark stone walls of the room replacing the blinding white of her torment. Ching lunged for the world and caught bed sheets, scraping tender arms against rough ropes and receiving a surge of refreshingly corporeal pain in return.

"—ith us yet?" asked Shang Tsung from the side of her bed.

She inhaled sharply and closed her eyes. The ropes would keep her from trying to kill him. This was good.

"Oh," he said, "I'm not here to set you free or anything."

Ching opened her eyes and watched him fade momentarily.

"Just here to say hello."

Ching grunted.

"Customarily," replied Tsung, "People say hello also, in response to such a greeting."

"What are you doing here?" Ching asked. Speaking hurt her throat.

"Well, waiting, really," Tsung said cheerily. "It gets so boring, waiting, but I assure you, it will be well worth it. When that holy cosmic gate opens and I'm allowed on that little world of yours, its people will pray for holocaust. Your people especially. I'm going to start with that little boyfriend of yours. First I'll make him pay for killing me, and then the Master will make him pay for existing, and trust me, that will be a show no one wants to miss."

"You always so long-winded?" she croaked.

Tsung smiled condescendingly, leaned down, and pinched her cheek. Ching shook her head violently to get away from his touch.

The door creaked open, and a wrinkled, grayish hag stepped through, carrying a wooden bowl and handful of bandages.

"Ah," said Tsung, standing up, "we were just discussing Mileena's _true love_'s long and painful death. How best to commemorate him? Hmm." He mimed thinking for a few moments. "Oh, I know." He pulled a small red leather book out of his pocket and flipped it open.

Ching's face suddenly became hot with rage. It was her little red leather book. Her letter. Her very private letter to her 'little boyfriend'.

Tsung unfolded the corner of the page he had turned to and began to read. "'Of course you were the young man-slash-scientist.' Slashes are tacky, Mileena, didn't you know? 'You were _undoubtedly_ the best thing that _ever_ happened to me.'" Tsung clutched his empty hand to his heart. "'You're also one of the strangest people I ever met.' See? You build the boy up, and you tear him down. No wonder he left you here."

Ching felt hot tears on her cheeks and pain in her jaw from clenching her teeth. Something animalistic was building inside her, and she gripped the bed sheets so tightly her wrists hurt to keep herself from trying to lunge at Tsung even though she couldn't reach him while tied to the bed.

"'Your personality,'" Tsung laughed, "'clashes with it—'"

"Aw, why don't you pick on someone your own size?" the witch suddenly crooned. She dunked the bandages in the bowl of foul-smelling liquid she had set on the table beside Ching's bed. "I am."

"Well, I see you've finally accepted that the totally incapacitated share the same amount of power as you," Tsung said, lazily shutting the book.

The witch touched Ching's arm. Her hand was cool and rough, and her touch seemed to pull the heat and anger out of Ching, leaving her feeling calmer than she had in months. "The girl gets tender ministrations," the witch said. She snapped her fingers, and Tsung jumped as though bitten. "I meant you."

Tsung's entire face turned red except for the cartilage on the outside of his nostrils, which was white from his nose being scrunched so violently. "I don't know why you're even still here," he spat. "Anyone can mix herbs."

"I'm still here, sweetheart—" she turned toward him for a moment, and Ching could have sworn she saw her bat her eyes, "—because I'm immortal."

"Immortal?" Tsung scoffed. "Your powers are _gone_. You're just living out the rest of your time."

"Yes, of course," the witch said, untying Ching's right arm and gently wrapping the wrist with a soaked cloth. The wound stung unbearably for a moment then began to numb. "Living out my time. But it's such an awfully long time, eternity. Sometimes I just don't know what to do with myself."

"This—this is insubordination," Tsung choked. Something hit the floor. "You'd better pray to those with actual power that your remaining days are short when your masters decide what to do with you."

"Yes, because this time—" the witch gently tied the rope back around the bandage on Ching's wrist, "—this is just to keep you from hurting yourself—I am quite certain they will care."

"I—You will—" Tsung snorted and slammed the door open on his way out.

Where he had been standing lay a little red leather book. Ching's breath heaved twice in surprise and sudden desperation. She reached out with the fingers of her right hand.

"Pity about you," the witch said as she untied Ching's left arm.

Ching concentrated as hard as she could on the book. She mustered all her strength and mentally threw it at the book.

It disappeared.

"Such ill-directed spirit," the witch muttered.

Ching looked at her. "He has your power," she whispered.

The witch cocked an eyebrow at her, looking amused. "Yes."

"Then—" Ching hesitated. "What _are_ you doing here?"

"Waiting." The witch grinned, exposing brown, rotting teeth.

The world faded out, without warning, and Ching saw and felt nothing of it.


	7. Chapter Seven

**Transposition**  
by Nyohah

**Chapter Seven**

* * *

"You lost her?" asked Shang Tsung, his voice conveying an unlikely mix of horror and glee. "She's the key to all of this, and you lost her?"

"She'll turn up," Shao Kahn said, near-panic comical in his deep voice. "She was in South America; she can't have gone far."

"All the effort the master has personally spent on this project of yours, and you lost her?" Tsung wrung his hands wickedly. "Makes being killed by a couple of Earth warriors look like the tiniest of missteps in comparison, doesn't it?"

"This is your failure." Kahn rounded on Tsung, towering over him where they stood on the floor in front of Kahn's royal dais. "The blood you got me during that tournament was not ideal. You were the one who found the ritual to resurrect her, who found the requirements for the blood, and then you swore it would work anyway, even with sullied blood."

"My failure? Mine? Blood I got you? Oh, no." Tsung backed up the stairs of the dais toward Kahn's throne, pointing a finger at Kahn's chest. "It was your tournament. It was your responsibility. And you were the one who begged the Master to help so that the non-ideal blood would have a better chance of working."

"It was my tournament—" Kahn stalked up the stairs after Tsung, "—but it was your idea."

"It's always my idea," Tsung said, standing between Kahn and his throne. "I'm the only one who ever has ideas around here."

"Yes, and you usually use them to worm your way out of being killed for your failures," Kahn growled.

"And it's your fault it even works," Tsung retorted. "Content to sit around and wait for well-meaning champions to stumble naively into your courts. Honestly, I don't know how you ever conquered worlds without me."

"I've never encountered a protected one before." Kahn shoved Tsung out of the way and sat in his throne.

Tsung wobbled on the edge of the dais for a moment, flailing his arms for balance. "Yeah, pity for you." He recovered and took a step forward. "Oh, the Master's going to be angry. And I suppose you're going to sit around and wait for me to come up with a new plan to fix the one you ruined."

"Sindel is still on earth," Kahn declared. "She is still my queen. Still my domain."

"And it makes no difference if she doesn't want to be rescued. The idea was to set such an evil upon the Earth Realm that it would _beg_ you to come and retrieve her. If instead the Earth Realm rallies around her to protect her from you, you'll never get in." Tsung stamped his foot. "How am I supposed to kill those brats who killed me if we don't get access to the Earth Realm?"

Kahn placed his chin on his fist and seethed.

Tsung rubbed his hands together again. "Oh, he's going to be so angry with you!" he cackled.

Kahn sat up. "You take the blame."

Tsung took a step backward, his face falling. "Me?"

Kahn stood up. "I'm your superior, and I order you to take the blame."

Tsung took another step backward, glancing over his shoulder at the edge of the dais. "But he's only had to resurrect you once. You take the blame. If he kills you, he'll bring you back again."

"You're the expendable one."

"Me? I'm the only one with ideas!"

"Here's an idea," Kahn said slowly. "You tell him, but blame it on whomever you'd like."

"He'd kill me for being the messenger," Tsung argued.

"Yes, but quickly. And when you're dead, I'll tell him it was your fault. I'm spared punishment, and you're spared a slow death. We both win."

"No, no!" Tsung begged wildly. "That's—" He stopped, regaining composure. "Look, we're in this together," he said. "We were both crucial to the plan, so both of us go down with it."

"Which is fine," Kahn hissed, "except for the part where I get killed."

"You misunderstand," Tsung explained in his usual cheery fashion. "The Master knows that we were both in charge of the plan, so if it doesn't work, he knows we're both to blame, and one or the other of us pointing fingers isn't going to change that."

"What I don't understand is why you're suddenly so happy about this."

"Well, the Master doesn't know yet," Tsung said, "and there's no reason we have to tell him right this minute."

"If you're suggesting we can keep a secret from him, that's lunacy." Kahn took another step forward. "And only more wriggling from a worm on a hook."

Tsung was unfazed. "Of course we can't keep a secret, but we don't have to report the error right away. We give it a few days. See if she turns up." Tsung waited a moment, then added, emphatically, "Send someone after her."

"If we could simply open a portal," Kahn replied dangerously, "then we wouldn't be in this situation."

"Which is why it's convenient," Tsung said through his teeth, "that we have an ally on Earth already."

Kahn stood up straighter and threw his shoulders back. "You will contact him immediately. We will say nothing of this affair until it is resolved."

Tsung grimaced and bowed. "Very good, Master Kahn."

* * *

Li Yuen Ming spun on the ball of her right foot, kicking her left foot up and to the left in a wide arc that impacted with a _whump_ into the punching bag hanging from the ceiling of Yen Sa's cellar. Her husband caught the punching bag and steadied it back into place. Ming brushed back hair that had fallen out of her braid and spun to kick the bag again.

Yen Sa's hard-soled shoes clacked on the concrete steps. Ming kicked the bag again.

"That looks as flawless as ever," Yen Sa said.

Ming breathed deeply and switched feet. "It comes back quickly. You'd know that already if you were practicing."

"Of course it comes back," Yen Sa answered. "I doubt it ever really left. We were the best fighters in our world. I mean, we won our way into an elite honor guard by finishing at the top of a global tournament. I don't think you can lose that kind of ability."

Li Wei Yong laughed. "You won your way in through that tournament. And Smoke did. Ming and I were guaranteed spots."

"And I might not have gotten mine otherwise," Ming said. She kicked the punching bag.

"Nonsense," Yen Sa said. "You were great. You really had drive. And you held your own as well as any of us in all the battles we fought."

"Except the one when you were kidnapped," Wei Yong teased.

Ming kicked the bag his direction. "My opponent cheated."

"So you must agree," Yen Sa cut in. "I'd be more surprised if we'd lost it all than if we were better than many of the young Lin Kuei in town."

"It's in our bones," Ming agreed.

"Muscles, really, I'd say."

Ming inclined her head at him and rolled her eyes.

"Not that any of us are going to be winning battles in Mortal Kombat any time soon," Li Wei Yong said.

"Not many people are, are they?" asked Yen Sa. "I think we have to leave that one to our children. Well, your children. Smoke's children. Certainly not the rest of the Lin Kuei."

"The Lis and the Huas," Wei Yong said, "together again. Though I must say I never expected Yuan to turn out to be such a talented fighter."

Yen Sa shrugged. "He's a special boy."

"He's always been a special boy," Ming said.

"Yes, but science and fighting are two separate things," Yen Sa said. "I'd always thought your older son—"

Ming kicked the punching bag. It smacked Wei Yong in the face. "Pay attention," Ming said huskily.

"Mulan's been making excellent progress," Yen Sa said quickly. "Maybe we should have encouraged more of our people to use their elements, if everyone picks it up that quickly."

"I didn't," Ming said flatly.

"Oh, of course," Yen Sa said. "I didn't mean to insinuate that, uh—"

"No, it's okay," Ming said, holding the punching bag in place. She took a deep breath. "It might have helped. Save Mandalore. But we can't blame ourselves for what Shao Kahn has done." She backhanded the punching bag.

"But as my wife points out," Wei Yong said blithely, "we can blame Kahn violently."

Yen Sa sat down on the stairs. "Do you think we're all going to die?"

"No," Ming said. "It's a stealth mission. In and out, as quickly as possible. We have no intention of bringing armies down upon us."

"I don't know," Wei Yong said. "I think it's probably insane of us to go. Smoke's the only one of us who's kept in shape, and he's not going. He's also the only one of us who's actually been there, and he's not going. I think that's rather foreboding."

"I guess exercise fights off senility," Yen Sa said.

Wei Yong laughed. "Must be. But ours would have to be premature senility caused by brain injuries due to fighting."

"Oh, everyone else thinks we're too old to fight," Yen Sa said. "Can't we be?"

"Let them think it," Ming said. "Their mistake."

"I just don't think we should be too optimistic about our chances," Wei Yong said. "Yuan will make it. But I'm not sure about us. We're out of practice. Like I said, none of us could win Mortal Kombat, and I think we'd be fooling ourselves to think that's not what's at stake."

"We don't have to win," Ming said. "We just have to survive." She swung her elbow in a short arc, slamming it against the punching bag. "But I'm winning."

Yuan watched coalescing blue and purple energy swirl, crackling, around a center point. The portal developed slowly between Mulan and him, obscuring her from his view. He glanced down into the open book in his hands every few seconds, running his finger along the page. Then the energy changed, turning black in an eye-blink. Yuan ducked expertly in the sudden silence as a vase from the table behind him flew toward the gravity well that had formed where the portal used to be.

"I'm sure you'll get it next time," he said, straightening up.

"You said that the past five times," Mulan said through her teeth, catching the vase as the gravity well dissipated.

"Well, I meant it. The infant portals you've been making look just like they do in the diagrams in here." He waved the book at her. "I'm sure you're doing it right. Maybe just more power."

"More power?" groaned Mulan. "Yuan, I'm tired. And I think we should get my dad back up here. Or your parents. They've actually seen one."

"I've seen one," Yuan said. "I've been through one."

"Okay, one," Mulan said. "They've seen lots of them, and been through lots of them, and more importantly, watched someone like me make one."

"There are diagrams in the book," Yuan said indignantly. "It explains all about what's supposed to happen, and the techniques you're supposed to use, and what it should look like at all stages of development, and how to easily maintain it."

"Books aren't perfect, Yuan," Mulan sighed, beginning to settle to the ground.

"Blasphemy!" Yuan declared, only half kidding. "And don't sit down. You'll have more energy standing up."

"I'm tired. I'm sitting down." She did, folding her legs beneath her.

"Well, if you're sitting down, then here—" He handed the book to her, tapping a passage. "Read this again. Refresh your memory."

Mulan hit the book out of his hand.

"Oh, that was mature," Yuan said, picking it up and flattening the bent pages.

"That book can't help me anymore. I need someone who knows what's supposed to happen to tell me what to do."

"You rest. And then you try again with more power." Yuan closed the book.

"Not you! Someone who's seen what's supposed to happen. In real life. Real experience." Mulan stretched her back. "That's what books can't give you."

"I won't argue with that," Yuan conceded, sitting next to her, "but books can aid you in identifying problems and tell you how to fix them."

"Yuan, if you don't shut up," Mulan said, "I'm going to _throw_ the book at you. And I mean that quite literally."

"Of course," Yuan said. "Take it out on the book."

Mulan laughed. "No. The pain I'm interested in is yours."

The doorbell buzzed.

"I'll get it!" Mulan called to the rest of the house, jumping up with no hint of her claimed tiredness. She jogged out of the room. Yuan got up and followed her.

As he entered the foyer, Mulan asked, "Oh, which ones are you?" She held the glass door wide open.

Two women and a man stood in the entryway.

"Which ones what?" asked the first woman through the door. She was wearing fishnet stockings and goggle-like sunglasses. "Wow," the woman continued, not waiting for an answer. She pushed her sunglasses up her forehead and gaped at the three-story foyer. "Is this a house or an office?"

"Both," Mulan answered, welcoming the remaining man and woman through the door. "And superheroes. I meant which superheroes are you. Yuan tells me there are about half a dozen of you coming."

"I'm Lau Tung Mei," the second woman said slowly. "This is my husband, Inspector Lau of the Hong Kong Police Department, and this is Chat."

"Wonder Woman and Thief Catcher," Yuan clarified.

"Oh, come to save Invisible Girl," Mulan said with a giggle. She stopped suddenly, with a pensive look. "Who, because Yuan no longer has a functioning invisibility robe, is no longer invisible."

Mrs. Lau smiled. "I guess she'll be easier to find."

Mulan smiled back. "Oh," she said. "I'm Yen Mulan. This is my father's house and business. He's in electronics."

"There's money in electronics, huh?" Chat asked, her mouth hanging open after she finished speaking.

"There is when you own the company," Mulan said.

"Yeah, bounty hunting's not as lucrative as you might think," Chat said idly. "I'd like a house like this. But not with a business." She grinned. "Just the house."

Yuan stepped forward, past Chat. He held his hand out to Mrs. Lau. "I'm Yuan Li," he said. "We spoke on the phone."

She shook his hand a little warily. He extended it to her husband. "Inspector Lau," he said.

"Nice to meet you, Mr. Yuan," Inspector Lau said, shaking his hand.

Mulan laughed.

"Oh, no," Yuan said. "It's Mr. Li if it's Mr. anything. I'd prefer just 'Yuan'."

"American-ized, have you?"

"Well, yeah," Yuan said dumbly. He continued quickly. "It's just that my full name has this problem where it's really way too full and embarrassing, but if I went by Li Yuan, I'd sound like a girl. So I switched."

"Movie stars do it," Chat said, shrugging.

"It makes more sense than going by the name 'Seven'," Mrs. Lau added.

"Hey," Chat said.

"Well, think about the name I'm stuck with," Mulan said. "Yen Mulan. Just because my adopted father found a book about her when he found me. Sometimes I'd rather just be, 'hey you girl'."

"People do sometimes make a fuss about your name," Yuan said. He turned to the newcomers. "But, if you'll follow me, I can show you what we're up to."

Mulan lead them out of the foyer and into the considerably more homey back of the building, where she and her father lived.

"There's a cellar below us," Yuan said. "Our parents are there—Mulan's and mine, I mean."

"And my father?" Mrs. Lau asked.

Yuan stopped. "Well, um, he's—he's not coming."

"Not coming? Not coming here or not coming to—" Mrs. Lau shook her head.

"Not coming to either, unless I'm wrong. I did try to convince him, and he's pretty mad at me right now, I think."

"And your relationship is?"

"I was his student. We're ninjas. Um, magic ninjas." He shrugged.

"Superhero types," Mulan said.

"But he's also a friend of the family," Yuan continued. "He and my parents go way back."

"Back to when they were all superheroes," Mulan said. "Sort of."

"It's really a long story," Yuan said, "and I can fill you in later. Or they can."

"Then why isn't my father coming?" Mrs. Lau asked insistently.

"He thinks we're all going to die," Yuan stated bluntly. "But we're not, because I know the place where we're going, since I stayed there for about a week once, and we have allies there. We have no way of getting in touch with them, but I'm sure once they realize we're there, they'll be ready to jump into the fray, given that they're—well, you get it."

"And he thinks we'll all die because?"

"Supervillains," Mulan said solemnly.

"We don't intend for them to know we were there until we've left," Yuan clarified quickly. "And they're not as nasty as the demon you two helped Ching kill in Hong Kong, at least according to Ching. They're sort of his underlings."

"If you take into consideration that his underlings are themselves world conquerors," Mulan added.

"I think this is a little out of my league," Inspector Lau said.

"Well, you're not coming," Yuan said. He pointed to the women. "Just them."

"Oh. Is she going?" Inspector Lau pointed to Mulan.

Mulan raised her hands and shook her head. "I don't fight. I'm just making the portal to get there. Did we mention that it's not on Earth?"

"You're both magic, then?"

"So's your wife," Yuan said slowly. "We did mention that she's not human, right?"

The Laus looked at each other in shock, then stared at Yuan and Mulan.

"Well, I think it sounds like fun," Chat said. "I brought dynamite."

* * *

Lundiy sat crammed into a bus seat with all the luggage. On top of the pile, conspicuous, lay Mistral's large pair of antlers. At least she had taken them off her head. It was about all the cooperation Mistral had exhibited.

Lundiy put her chin on her fist and stared out the window. Across from her, past the luggage and the aisle, Mistral sat beside the devil woman. Mistral was on the aisle, between the devil woman and her most easily accessible means of escape. The windows were quite small, but so was the devil woman. With some effort, she could get through them, but not quickly.

Not that the devil woman looked eager to try to escape, or to do anything but stare at her feet. She was even wearing the sunglasses Lundiy had bought to hide her solid white eyes. The sunglasses had a tendency to slip off her face when she bowed her head—which was always—so Lundiy had tied a string snugly around the devil woman's head, connecting the two earpieces and holding the glasses on. It didn't even look bad, because Lundiy had also wrapped the devil woman's head with a scarf, her black-streaked white hair tightly bundled beneath it. Peasant clothes, slip-on shoes, and a long coat completed the masking of the devil woman's obvious otherworldly origination. She looked like a Muslim woman traveling, more than anything, so she didn't really blend in with the locals, but no one was likely to start screaming due to her appearance. Unless they saw her fingernails.

If only Mistral had been as cooperative. Lundiy had managed to cajole her into putting a blouse on over her leather bustier, but Mistral had kept her leather pants and boots, then pulled the antlers off her head, frizzing up her long, wavy, dark brown hair a little and acting as though she was doing Lundiy the biggest favor in the world by taking them off. Lundiy suspected the only reason she had was that she wouldn't have fit on the bus with them on.

Lundiy had dressed herself up nicely, in a skirt and blouse and matching shoes. She had even put her hair up, while Mistral stared at her like she was the one with otherworldly origins. Mistral, sitting lazily in her leather pants with her long, toned arms and legs crossed and her hair flipping wherever it wanted to, looked like a movie star trying to enjoy a day in the country.

Lundiy wasn't the only one who had noticed. While waiting for the bus, one of the teenaged girls in the crowd had come over to Mistral with a slip of paper and a pen, babbling nervously, asking for her autograph. Mistral had backed away a little from the girl and signed the paper to get her to go away, though Lundiy had tried to get her to stop, knowing that Mistral hadn't realized what was going on.

In five minutes, the entire crowd had been pressing on them. Mistral, finally having caught on but not caring, still tried to sign autographs until the crowd had gotten too close, and she had lost her temper, crossing her arms and staring at them all stonily. It was Lundiy screaming at them all to get away and threatening to sue them if they so much as touched her client that had finally gotten the crowd to back off. She thought it was probably the screaming and not the words that had done the trick. She really hadn't even been able to understand herself, the way her voice was cracking.

But now they were stuck with all of them on the bus, and everyone was whispering, making the whole trip tense. People also kept throwing reverent glances back at Mistral like she was some sort of saint. The saint of leather pants. Then they would glance warily at Lundiy, hoping she hadn't seen them and wouldn't start yelling again.

Lundiy _wasn't jealous_. Mistral was jeopardizing their entire mission with her casual good looks, and it wasn't just Lundiy and Mistral who were at stake. The excited crowd wouldn't have been able to defend themselves if the devil woman had been sent on another rampage by their commotion. True, throughout the ordeal, the devil woman had stood there like nothing was happening, but they couldn't risk something setting her off again. Not before they got to Yanxubin and found out what she was and what to do with her. And hopefully not even then. Lundiy's screaming had been a little hoarser than usual, and the reason had to do with the ring of devil-woman-finger-shaped bruises around her neck, hidden by the scarf she had tied around it.

They were running as fast as they could toward answers and protection, but the bus could only go so fast. They had checked prices for trans-Pacific flights in Salta and found they didn't have enough money for both a train ride and a flight. The buses were slower, but not as slow as taking the train, then taking a ship.

Lundiy gripped the money for the airplane tickets in her hand and watched the signs go by. Twenty miles to Buenos Aires.


	8. Chapter Eight

**Transposition**  
by Nyohah

**Chapter Eight**

* * *

Yuan slurped his porridge, swinging his leg under the table. He kicked the table leg—again—and his father dropped his spoon.

"Yuan, for the sake of all our sanities, stop that now," he said.

"Hear, hear," added Mr. Yen, not bothering to glance up from his newspaper as he took another cruller.

Yuan looked sheepishly at the other occupants of the table—Inspector and Mrs. Lau—and stopped swinging his leg. "Sorry."

Mrs. Lau smiled forgivingly at him and returned to her breakfast.

Yuan turned to his father. "Where's Mom?" he asked.

"I don't know."

"She just made breakfast and left?"

His father shrugged. "She's not the only one who's missing."

"Yeah, but I wouldn't expect Mulan to be up yet. Or, uh, Chat. It's early."

"It's not early," his father snapped. "I already did all the morning chores, with no help."

"It is early for Mulan," Mr. Yen replied, taking a drink of coffee. He choked and spilled it down his front when a rush of wind and a sudden crackling hailed the opening of a portal behind him.

Yuan's mother stepped out of it, followed by Mulan, who seemed to have leaped.

"I did it!" she squealed, bouncing on the balls of her feet as the portal died away behind her. "I did it!"

Yuan dropped his spoon and stood up, knocking over his chair. Mr. Yen wiped angrily at his shirt. Inspector Lau started and dropped his spoon into his lap. His wife watched Mulan with wide eyes. Yuan's father waved absently.

"This is—" Yuan stammered. "I mean—"

"Now don't be mad, Yuan," Mulan said. "I know you wanted to figure it out, but your mom was just so helpful. I thought about not telling you, and doing it right the next time you tried to teach me, but I was just so excited! So I made another one to come and show you guys." She settled down a little. "And deception is bad."

"This is great!" Yuan stumbled around the table and pulled Mulan into a hug. She laughed, and Yuan let go of her to hug his mother.

"I'm very proud of her," she said.

Yuan stepped back and turned to face the six people in the kitchen. "Everyone," he said, "get ready. We're going in three hours."

"We're what?" asked his father.

"I thought we were waiting for more fighters," said Mrs. Lau.

"Well, they're not here yet, and we've already waited," Yuan said. "Besides, how many people can you have and still have a stealth mission? Five more people would just slow us down, and still be about a hundredth of the army we need to execute a direct attack."

"Yuan," Mr. Yen said, "you've only waited a day."

"That's true, but we're all pretty nervous. Do you think we could stand another day, let alone a week?"

No one answered.

"Mulan," he said, "get ready to do your thing. You might want to study all the notes we have about Outworld so you have a clearer picture of your destination when it comes time to leave. Inspector Lau, you've got a gun, so I figure you can help with security here in Mr. Yen's house. The rest of you, get your fighting gear ready. Anything you have that would give you an edge, make sure you have it. Magic swords, magic darts, anything you can carry."

He turned to Mrs. Lau. "I know you haven't had very long to digest what's going on, but I think you understood well enough. That said, if you have any more questions, you've got three hours to ask them."

She nodded.

"Make sure Chat gets ready," he added. "I know she doesn't have any magic powers, but she does have a shotgun. And dynamite. I doubt there's any chance she wouldn't bring it, but make sure she does."

Yuan looked at them all, and took a deep breath.

"The cellar, three hours. Don't be late."

* * *

"Excellent," Vendetta murmured. "Excellent." The paper in his hand rustled. It was an overview of all the projects Yen Sa's company was working on. Enmity had presented it to her father nervously, and now she waited, breathing in the musty air coming off the floor tiles, the back of her neck exposed and her fingers nervously clenching her forearms where she held them clasped together behind her back. She breathed a quiet sigh of relief at Vendetta's words, the air warming her chin.

She heard her father's soft-soled boots scuff lightly against the ground as he walked away from her. The creak of his desk chair as he sat down and the scratching of his pen were louder. Vendetta tapped his pen against the desk, and Enmity almost winced. The pen scratched some more, decisively, and when the legs of his chair scraped against the ground, Enmity did wince.

Vendetta did not seem to notice. "Rise," he said.

She sat up, keeping her head bowed, her weight shifting back to her heels.

"You have done well," Vendetta said. "Now, you will procure these things immediately."

The lower end of the paper moved into her view, and she unclasped her arms to take it graciously with both hands. Vendetta had marked up her list, making little ticks by the names of certain projects and circling the names of scientists working on those projects.

"I trust you'll have no trouble finding them," Vendetta said.

"No, sir," Enmity replied immediately, her eyes still scanning the list. At the bottom, a single name was written. The blood rushed to Enmity's face, and she gasped audibly, then closed her eyes in shame, forcing herself not to cower.

"He should be at the mansion now," Vendetta said. "You are dismissed."

* * *

Yuan stood at the end of Mr. Yen's cellar with his arms crossed, pacing. Half an hour until his set deadline. He'd already been waiting in the cellar for an hour and a half.

His parents stood against the wall, looking much like Yuan felt. Restless. Impatient. They had arrived only a few minutes earlier after making sure everything at their house was in order, but they looked like they had been waiting much longer.

Chat had been the first to arrive, clomping down the stairs not long after Yuan. She was the only person who didn't seem nervous, and her casual chatter hadn't helped Yuan's nerves. He had been grateful when the Laus came down, asking a few timid questions. Mulan had been next, but she hadn't made it past the stairs. She sat on the bottom step, leaning against the railing, holding her stomach. She looked even more like Yuan felt than Yuan's parents did.

Mr. Yen was the only person Yuan was still waiting on. But Mr. Yen had already come down to tell Yuan he was going to make sure all the doors were locked. Yuan still felt like he was waiting on stragglers. He supposed it was restlessness.

His mother frowned and walked over to Mulan, sitting on the stairs beside her and putting a hand against her cheek.

"Are you feeling all right?"

Mulan shook her head.

"You'll be fine," Li Yuen Ming said. "You're very talented."

"What if I send them to the wrong place?" Mulan asked.

"It's not going to happen."

"Outworld's about the worst place you could send us," Yuan said, "and that's the goal."

"Oh, right," Mulan said, "so what if I send you there, and then I can't keep the portal open? I can't—"

"You're strong," Ming said. "You'll make it."

"It's okay, Mulan," Yuan said. "We won't be an hour."

"An hour?" She moaned. "I'm going to lose it, and you're all going to get stuck there and die because of me."

Ming looked up at Yuan. He recognized the look. _Shut up._ He nodded and put his hand on his mouth, turning away.

"You kept the portal open without any trouble before," Ming soothed. "It doesn't get any harder."

"Mulan, are you all right?" asked Mr. Yen from the top of the stairs.

She laughed nervously. Ming stood up and held out her hand. "Come on. Let's go join the others."

Mulan took her hand and stood up, slowly walking farther into the cellar. Mr. Yen followed her.

Yuan turned back around to face everyone. "So we're all ready then?" he asked.

"As ready as we'll ever be," answered his father.

"This won't be easy," Yuan said. " I know. I'm trusting you all to be ready to improvise. I know generally what to expect, but I don't know the specifics. So if it seems like we're flying blind, it's because we...don't have any eyes."

"Are we all going?" asked Mr. Yen. "Six is a large group for stealth, unless we split up—"

"We're not splitting up," Yuan said. "Well, we are, but only into two groups. Or three if you consider the back guard still on Earth."

"Back guard?" asked Mrs. Lau.

"Yes. We can't just leave a portal from Earth to Outworld lying around unprotected. I'm leaving two guards on either side of it, to make sure that we're the only ones who use it. Inspector Lau, I already asked you to stay. Mr. Yen, I'm leaving you here, too. If anything comes through the portal that isn't us, you kill it, and you close the portal."

Mr. Yen nodded. "Of course."

"It could be monsters," Yuan said to Inspector Lau. "Just—well, probably lots of bullets is your best bet. If you're a good shot, you might want to aim for the eyes, especially if they're really big monsters with four arms. I'm not sure to what degree bullets are going to bounce off these things."

"I understand," Inspector Lau said.

"Good." Yuan turned back to the whole group. "That leaves five of us in Outworld. Again, I'm leaving two people to guard the portal. Dad, Chat, I've assigned this to you. If something tries to go through the portal, and it's not us, kill it. If there's a whole bunch of things trying to go through, and you can't kill them all, you go back through it and have Mulan close the portal. If it's Shao Kahn or Shang Tsung, don't try to fight. Just go through the portal and have Mulan close it. You know what they look like, right, Dad?"

"By description," he said.

"It's better than nothing. I'm assuming you know what else to expect. Shokans? Mutants?"

"I've fought them both," Li Wei Yong said.

"Good. Chat, you heard what I said about bullets. Your shotgun has more power, but I think you might be better off with dynamite if it gets rough."

"And you just want us to leave if it gets too rough?" Chat asked.

"Earth is a protected realm," Yuan said. "No one on Outworld can make a portal to Earth. If they could, they would invade and take it over, merging Earth with Outworld. No more Earth. Same thing that happened to Mandalore."

"And portals are always two-way, just like any doorway," Wei Yong said. "You make a portal from Earth to Outworld, and you leave Earth open to attack. If we were to leave that portal open and unguarded, Shao Kahn could use our portal to invade Earth."

"And I'm hoping I don't have to take a poll to make sure we're all anti-apocalypse," Yuan said. "Not to mention the general havoc any one of those monsters could create here. It wouldn't be pretty."

"I don't want to be the reason the whole world ends," Mulan said.

"You won't," said Ming. "No one can force you to keep that portal open. The minute something bad happens, you close it. No more armies. You're in control."

"Okay," Yuan said. "The last group. That's me, Mom, and Mrs. Lau."

"You can call me Tung," Mrs. Lau said. "If we're going to be fighting together, we ought to be familiar."

Yuan nodded. "Me, Mom, and Tung. We do not split up. We're fast; we're quiet. I have a good idea where I'm going, so hopefully there's no need to explore. But even if there is, we do not split up."

"But if we wanted to be faster—" Tung began.

"No," Yuan said. "Better to be a little slower and still alive. If we meet anyone we have to fight, three against one are odds I like. Three against two is workable. One against two is no good."

Tung nodded once.

"With any luck," Yuan continued, "we'll run into Kitana or Jade, our allies. They both look a lot like Ching. I like to think they'll be watching over her to some degree and would stay near her, but they have other duties. We may not even see them, so we can't—"

Yuan stopped and stared. One by one, the others turned around to look back at the staircase.

"Looks like I almost missed it," said Smoke as he stepped off the last stair.

"That's because you did almost miss it," Yuan said flatly.

"I'm glad I didn't."

"You gonna say hi to your daughter?"

Smoke didn't answer, but he turned his head, looking quickly through the group.

"She's not the one with the shotgun," Yuan said.

"It's okay," Tung said, clearly embarrassed, giving Yuan an irritated look. "We don't have to do this now."

"Tung Mei," Smoke began quietly.

Tung held up a hand. "No," she said. "Wait until we return. With my sister. We'll be a whole family, then." She smiled weakly. "And then we only have to do this once. Much easier on everyone that way."

Smoke lowered his head and nodded.

"Are you sure that Ching will even care about you two if she's got her boyfriend around?" asked Chat.

Yuan turned to give her an angry look but saw the one Tung gave her and decided his wasn't needed.

"Okay, never mind," Chat said.

"How'd you get in here, anyway," Mr. Yen asked Smoke. "I locked everything."

"Your windows aren't hard to unlock," Smoke said.

"He's a ninja, remember, Dad?" said Mulan.

"I just thought our security system was better than that," Mr. Yen said. "I'll have to look into it when this is over. Maybe I'll have you and Yuan test it out for me."

"Hey," Chat said. "And me and Ching. We're pretty good at ninja stuff, too."

"I'll let you have a crack at it," Mr. Yen said. "Certainly."

"Are you guys finished?" Yuan asked.

Mr. Yen nodded. "Sorry, Yuan."

"Well," Yuan said, "change of plans. Dad, you stay here, and add to the portal defense on this side. Smoke, you take his place, guarding the portal in Outworld with Chat. Anything tries to go through—" He stopped, looking at Smoke. "You still don't want to come, do you?"

Smoke didn't answer.

"Fine," Yuan said. "Dad, you're back in your original spot. Smoke, stay here and guard the portal from this side. Anything comes through besides us, kill it. You know what to expect. Mulan." Yuan stepped back and waved at the wall behind where he had been standing.

Mulan stepped forward, breathing deeply.

"You'll want to make the portal close to the wall," Wei Yong said, "so that something coming through the portal from the wrong side gets stuck in the wall. It's very messy but helpful."

"Grotesque, really," said Mr. Yen. "Make sure not to get it too close, though, or you might make it through the wall, and then all sorts of stuff could come out the other side and we'd never know."

"They'd end up in the ground, though, where we are," Wei Yong answered, "and that would be just as messy. But if it's actually in the wall, that might interfere with our getting through—"

"I can't concentrate with you two blabbering!" Mulan shouted.

"Wait, Mulan," Yuan said. "Just a minute." He turned back to face everyone. "I forgot the last thing I wanted to say."

"What is it, Yuan?" Ming asked.

"Just, everybody, remember that we expect our opponents to be stronger than we are and to have mystical powers. Nobody from Outworld fights fair. They can teleport, or shoot fire, or become invisible, or are just really big and strong. Fighting them is a nightmare, really, so always expect them to do something unbelievable, and take them down as quickly as possible so that they don't have time to. If your life is on the line, retreat. I want everybody to make it out alive. We all want everybody to make it out alive. I'm hoping we're as much against any of us dying as we are against the apocalypse."

The others laughed nervously.

"But don't forget this," Yuan continued. "This is our only chance to save Ching. And I'm not leaving without her. Not again. So don't try to make me, and don't retreat without me unless you don't have a choice. If you're not willing to die for this, fine. But I am, so if it comes down to a choice between you and me, you choose the person who means more to you."

"Yuan," Ming said quietly, "if we weren't willing to die for this, we wouldn't be here."

Yuan bowed his head and stepped back again.

"Now?" Mulan asked. "For real this time?"

Yuan nodded. Mulan braced herself and raised her arms, pointing her palms toward the wall.

"Remember—" Wei Yong began.

"I know!" Mulan shouted. She dropped her hands and turned around to face Ming. "Sorry," she said.

"No, yell at him all you'd like," Ming said.

"He deserved it," Yuan said. "Now, please." He waved at the wall.

Ming nodded, took a deep breath, and turned back around to face it. The portal began as a smoky purple ball, blue charges occasionally arcing over its surface. As the ball grew, it flattened, spreading outward until where the ball had been there was a sucking depression in a large swirling disc.

Mulan stepped back. "Okay." She rubbed her hands on her pants. "I guess you'll want to hurry."

Yuan nodded. "Let's go."

"Just a minute," Ming said. She stepped over to Mulan. "As you get tired," she told her, "it may seem to you that time starts to move strangely. You've opened a big rip in what Yuan would call the time-space continuum—not a dangerous rip, just a useful one. If time passes oddly, it doesn't mean that something bad has happened to the portal or to you. It just means that it's tapping deeper energy, so you're more closely in tune with it. Don't be afraid if it happens."

Mulan rubbed her hands together and nodded. "Okay," she said quietly.

"Now I'm ready," Ming said.

Yuan caught her eye and raised an eyebrow.

Ming smiled and raised one hand, reaching for her bladed staff where it leaned against the wall. "I'll tell you when we get back," she said.

"Tell him what?" asked Chat. "Did I miss something?"

"No," said Yuan. "Everyone ready?"

Nobody nodded, but nobody objected.

"Follow me, then," Yuan said. He patted his back to make sure his sword was still sheathed across his shoulder blades and jumped through the portal.

* * *

Hua Ching Sa opened her eyes. The cubical stone room came immediately into sharp focus, and she could read the runes covering the ceilings and the walls. Pain and death and power and glory.

She tried to sit up, and made it halfway before the binding on her forearms stopped her. Her arms were tied tightly to the bed along her sides. She jerked them back violently. The ropes around her arms scraped forward and caught on her hands, taking the bandages they had been tied around with them. The flesh of her arms where the ropes had been was pink and cracked, blistered. She pulled harder on her right arm. Pain was nothing to her and the skin of her wrists would heal if torn. But freeing herself wasn't a matter of skin. She would have to crush the bones of her hands to pull them through the small loops around her wrists.

She lay down and closed her eyes, concentrating.

The prickling of the ropes on her arms disappeared in the instant the extra weight of the ropes appeared on her stomach. Ching brushed them off and sat up, swinging her lower body to the side.

Her feet touched the floor, and Hua Ching Sa stood for the first time in months.


	9. Chapter Nine

**Transposition**  
by Nyohah

**Chapter Nine**

* * *

Kitana tugged at the top of her gloves, pulling them farther up her arm. The fabric immediately returned to its natural state, settling halfway up her forearm, exactly where it had been before. She realized the pointlessness of her actions, but she couldn't help it. It was like a nervous tic. It wasn't her arms she wanted to cover more, but she couldn't pull on the fabric where she wanted to in public.

The three of them—Jade, Rain, and Kitana—were wearing the new uniforms they had received in preparation for the invasion of Earth. There still had been no official announcement that they were, in fact, invading, but none of them doubted that the special meeting that had been called was for any reason other than announcing it.

Rain's new uniform looked almost exactly like his old one, purple fabric over a black ninja suit in the same fashion favored by the Lin Kuei of Earth. His new sculpted mask had a bit more adornment than the old, but Kitana could find no other modifications. Tanya had no uniform as she was not primarily a fighter, but the dress she was wearing had a lot in common with Kitana and Jade's new uniforms.

Jade had assisted Kitana in pulling the front of her uniform closed as far as possible, bracing her leg against Kitana's and pulling the strings as though she were trying to tie a corset to achieve a seventeen-inch waist. When Jade had done the best she could, she stepped back, and Kitana looked in the mirror. They instantly agreed that they had only made matters worse, and Kitana had loosened the lacing until it was safe but not deforming and stepped out of her room with her head held high.

The four of them stood in an antechamber outside Kahn's throne room, waiting until the Shadow Priests on either side of the door let them in. Tanya was, for once, allowed in the meeting, confirming Kitana's suspicion that it was a proclamatory meeting rather than a strategic one. Kitana presumed Tanya would be there waiting even if she wasn't allowed in, as she never seemed to be far from Rain. She couldn't imagine waiting through a long strategic meeting with just the Shadow Priests for company, but she knew Tanya had done it. She hoped Tanya had never tried to seduce them. They weren't men—not even remotely—and they gave her an uneasy feeling every time she was around them. She grudgingly admired Rain for his ability to command them. Even Shao Kahn occasionally had trouble getting them to obey his orders.

"Of course we all know what he's going to say," Rain said. "I only wonder if we'll be let in on the method. I can't deny that wondering how Kahn could gain access to Earth is quite the distraction."

"I suppose it's some tricky scheme of Shang Tsung's," Kitana said carefully, remembering Rain's suggestion the last time the subject had come up between them. Her mother. Sindel.

"Everything always is, isn't it?" Rain replied. "I imagine it's something completely appalling as well."

"Blood," Kitana said, her voice raspy. She cleared her throat. "The last tournament was all about blood."

"Blood magic. It can only bring about corruption." Rain shook his head. "Crude and base. It may give one the ability to take something pure and thoroughly warp and taint it, but why would you want to?"

"What's warped to one person," said Tanya, giving Kitana and her outfit a disdainful eye, "is natural to another."

"Clearly," said Jade.

"I won't argue that," Rain replied, patting Tanya's hand, "but it amazes me that anyone would go through so much trouble to restore life just to destroy it. Life is fragile, and it's much easier to take away." He looked at Tanya. "Or to make anew."

Tanya giggled.

Kitana put her hand over her mouth, the pressure causing the silk of her mask to get caught between her lips. She had seen her mother, shortly after her resurrection, in a scrying pool conjured by the demon witch who tended Ching. She had been evil—there was no doubt—but Kitana hadn't known where Sindel was at the time. She supposed there was no denying it anymore, not when her mother's resurrection had been the aim of the previous tournament and the imminent invasion its aftermath. Sindel was on Earth.

"If they do find a way to open a passage to Earth," she said, "I'll be the first to go."

"May the Emperor appreciate your zeal," said Rain, his voice less patriotic than sympathetic.

Tanya shifted her weight. "She's—"

The Shadows Priests hissed as one. Rain whirled to face them, knocking Tanya off balance. She stumbled, catching herself before she fell. The Shadow Priests snarled, one after the other in quick succession.

Kitana's heart pounded. "What is it?" she asked quietly.

"You broke my shoe," Tanya said, pulling it off her foot.

The Shadow Priests began to chant gutturally, each making the same sounds in a slightly different rhythm from the other.

"It's a portal," Rain said. "From Earth."

"Here?" asked Tanya.

"The Earth warriors have come to rescue Mileena," said Jade.

"I don't believe it," Tanya scoffed.

"We—have to stop them." Kitana stood a little straighter.

Rain turned back around. "Tanya, you go home."

"But—"

"Go home. Lock the door. Bolt the door. Push one of your wardrobes in front of it."

"You three aren't the only ones who want to aid our Emperor in the destruction of—"

"Tanya."

"Okay, okay." She hobbled away angrily.

"Jade," Kitana said.

"Yes," she answered, taking off like track runner toward the wall to their right. She slid through it like it wasn't there.

Kitana turned to start down the hallway behind her, but Rain caught her hand and pulled her close to him. "If it were my mother," he whispered in her ear, "I would, too."

He loosened his grip, and Kitana slid her arm out of it. She took three steps backward, staring at him. He turned on his heel and strode away. She turned and ran.

* * *

Mulan's portal opened into a courtyard filled with vines.

"This is it," Yuan said. "Outworld."

"I know this place," Wei Yong mused.

"I thought you'd never been here," Tung said.

"It was a courtyard in the Edenian palace," Ming explained. "They've ruined the statues. And the vines are new. But otherwise it's the same."

"Must be Outworld," said Wei Yong.

"I just said it was," answered Yuan. "It's Shao Kahn's palace. More to our luck, it's a part of Shao Kahn's palace that isn't used very often."

"And it's fairly defensible," Wei Yong said. "Only two entrances. We'll split them, then."

"Yeah, but you're not just going to stand there if all the monsters come to mine, right?" asked Chat.

"Of course not," Wei Yong laughed. "I meant to watch."

"This is good," Yuan said. "I know where we are, and while it's farther from where we're headed than I'd like, I think we can skirt the busy part of the palace entirely." He drew his sword. "Let's go."

Tung drew her flexible sword from the sheath wrapped around her wrist. She stepped forward, Ming beside her.

"Hey, remember what side of the portal we came out on," Wei Yong called after them. "You really don't want to end up in the wall."

Yuan, Tung, and Ming rushed out of the courtyard, Yuan pausing to look both ways down the corridor before entering.

"We're on the wrong side of the arena," he said. He started off down the corridor. "This should junction with another hallway that will take us around the arena to the medical room on the opposite corner."

"We have to go around?" asked Tung. "Can't we go through?"

"It's a big open space," Yuan said. "With tiers of seating that aren't exactly conducive to quick movement. Also, there really aren't any doorways where we would need them to be."

"But it's an arena."

"People's convenience and safety aren't nearly as important to Shao Kahn as his own security," Yuan said. "Lots of people are allowed in the arena that aren't allowed up on this level. This is the fancy level. Wouldn't make sense to have a lot of doorways." He pointed to a break in the wall ahead of them. "I think this is our hallway."

They backed up against the wall, and Yuan glanced around the corner. "No one's out there. Let's go."

They hurried down the new corridor and soon came to another intersection. Yuan glanced around the corner again and saw a woman in blue turn, running, into another opening further down the hall.

He pulled his head back quickly. "Kitana," he gasped.

"Our ally?" asked Tung.

"Yeah, but she was going away from where we need to go."

"Then let's go. We're exposed here."

"Well, it's just—"

"Yuan?" asked Ming.

"We're heading to where Ching was, but there's no guarantee she's still there."

"Then we need Kitana," Ming said.

"And she looked a little like she needed help," Yuan said, "but she's headed in the general direction of Kahn's throne room, which is a place I'd rather not be."

"Would she know what room you were headed to?"

"Probably."

Ming stepped forward and looked around the corner. "I'm going."

"Wait!" Yuan grabbed her arm. "We're not splitting up."

"Yuan, we have to. Which corner did she take?"

He let go of her arm and pointed. "That one."

"We'll meet you in the room you're going to." Ming ran down the corridor after Kitana.

Yuan took a step out into the intersection and watched her go. A moment after she had turned the corner, Tung grabbed his arm and pulled him back.

"Door," she whispered.

Yuan glimpsed a door at the end of the hallway open as he was pulled out of the intersection. Tung pushed him against the wall, behind a large vase, and held her finger to her lips. Yuan heard slow, even footsteps. He breathed shallowly and waited. A man dressed in a purple ninja uniform strode into the intersection.

Tung's grip on Yuan's arm tightened, and Yuan held his breath, but the ninja did not turn in their direction. He took a few steps directly away from them, opened a door, and entered.

"That is not good," Yuan said when the door had closed. "He and my mom are going to end up in the same hallway."

"I think we should run," Tung said.

Yuan nodded, and they sprinted down the corridor.

* * *

Kitana ran down the short hallway away from the antechamber and took the corner into the larger corridor as sharply as she could. The next corner took her in the direction she wanted to go—toward the room in which Mileena was imprisoned—and she ran onto a balcony overlooking the ground floor two stories beneath her only to almost run into Reptile.

"The meeting—" Reptile began.

"The Earth warriors—" Kitana interrupted, breathless.

"What are you two imbeciles doing?" Shang Tsung shouted.

Kitana whirled to see him standing on the opposite balcony, separated from her by a distance of thirty feet. Jade stood a few paces farther along the balcony. Kitana raised her arm questioningly toward Jade.

"He told me to wait here until he was finished," she said.

"Yes," Tsung continued irritably. "I've just triangulated the energies in the building. The portal is in the old Edenian courtyard." He pointed back the way Kitana had come. "Go secure it while I tell our Emperor so he can send his troops."

Kitana took a deep breath. "Kill him, Jade," she ordered, pointing at Shang Tsung.

Jade pulled a long knife out of her boot and stepped forward.

"Don't kill me, you stupid clone!" Tsung shouted. "Kill her!" He pointed back across the opening separating him from Kitana. Jade tried to turn and tottered.

"Don't kill me," Kitana said. "You know who here deserves death."

Jade didn't move.

Tsung snorted. "Reptile, kill Kitana."

Reptile shook his head. "You betrayed the people," he growled.

"Oh, well, this is marvelous," Tsung said. "Is there anyone left in Outworld not planning to betray us?"

Kitana heard footsteps behind her. She turned to see a woman holding a long bladed staff stop just inside the doorway leading to the balcony. She looked familiar, but Kitana could not remember ever meeting her.

"You!" Tsung shouted.

"Yes," the woman said in lightly accented English, walking slowly toward Kitana. "Me."

Kitana looked more closely at the woman. "You're the Mandalorian queen."

The woman nodded, her eyes on Tsung.

Kitana turned back to him. Jade still stood frozen, her knife raised, wobbling in place as though about to lose her balance.

"Jade," she said, "He may say you have to obey both of us, but you can overcome this, I know."

"Don't obey Kitana anymore, Jade," Tsung said. "Obey me alone."

"You know it doesn't work that way," Kitana answered.

"And don't you think I didn't try to break her ties to you when I made her," Tsung said. "I knew you'd be trouble. Kahn should have killed you with the rest of your family."

"What?" the Mandalorian queen scoffed. "So that you could cover up how amateur a cloner you are?"

"I'll deal with you later!" Tsung hissed.

"Jade," Kitana said. "I trust you. You're better than he ever intended. You're more than just his cloned servant."

"Yes," Tsung said mockingly. "She's also your cloned servant. And how I wish you were dead so you would stop ruining mine!"

"Then kill me yourself. Or are you afraid to try?"

The door leading to the balcony across from Kitana shut with a thud, and everyone but Jade turned. Rain stepped onto the balcony, surveying the area.

"Finally," Tsung said. "Someone loyal."

Rain turned to Tsung, cocking his head.

"I wouldn't be sure," Kitana said quietly.

Rain turned to her and bowed.

"Stop this nonsense, Rain," Tsung said, pointing at Kitana, "and kill—"

Rain stepped right past him. He stopped in front of Jade, who was still struggling feebly, trying to move. He pulled the knife out of her hand, turned it around, and plunged it through her heart with both hands. Jade's paralysis ceased, and she relaxed, falling forward into the knife and wrapping both of her hands around Rain's. He pulled his hands from beneath hers, and she pulled the knife out with a grunt. It clattered on the stone flooring. Rain took a step backward. Jade swayed and fell forward, her face smacking the floor a moment before her torso. She lay still.

Kitana screamed.

"I wanted you to kill the other one!" Tsung bellowed. "This one was useful."

Rain took another step backward and turned toward Kitana.

She covered her masked face with her hands.

Rain saluted her, his forearm streaked with blood. He lowered his arm, turned on his heel and marched back the way he came.

Tsung watched him go, his attention lingering on the doorway for a few moments after Rain had gone. He shook his head dismissively and turned back to Kitana.

Kitana pulled her fans from her boots, her body hunched and her breath short. She flicked her fans open at her sides.

"You won't get to her before I do," Tsung said. He turned and ran down the balcony in the opposite direction from the way Rain had gone, sliding on the puddle of blood Jade lay in, leaving a trail of bloody footprints.

Kitana ran along her side of the balcony, keeping her head lowered and her fans open, swinging them parallel with her body. She heard the others running behind her.

The balconies intersected with the grand corridor connecting Kahn's throne room with the arena before continuing on the other side. Kitana reached the corridor a half-second before Tsung, angling her way toward his side of the balcony. He turned from the balcony entirely, running toward the arena.

An enormous vine suddenly grew from the middle of the stone hallway near Tsung and whipped around, slamming him against the wall. Kitana stumbled to a halt in confusion. A cool hand grabbed her upper arm.

The Mandalorian queen. Kitana had forgotten.

"This one is on our side?" the woman asked, pointing to Reptile, who had stopped just behind them.

"He destroyed the people," Reptile said.

"Then we will take care of Shang Tsung," the queen continued.

"No," Kitana said, her eyes on Tsung, who was pinched against the wall, still struggling with the vine. "I will."

The woman's grip on her arm increased. It was almost painful.

"My son—Sub-Zero—"

Kitana looked at the woman in shock. The woman's gaze flicked from Kitana's face down the hallway and back again.

"—is going to the last place he saw Ching. Go help him. We'll keep Tsung busy."

Kitana shook her head and looked back at Tsung. He had begun throwing balls of fire in the shape of skulls at the vine, which, while burning, was still fighting. It whipped against his face, and Tsung's head hit the wall. He steadied himself, shook his head, and threw another ball of fire.

Kitana took a step forward. Instead of pulling her arm free of the queen's grip, the queen's grip tightened even more. Kitana could feel fingernails gouging her skin.

"He's not the one who killed her," the queen said.

Kitana's mind cleared. "You're right," she said. She turned back to the queen. "He's going to the room she was in when he left?"

"Yes." The queen let go of her arm. "Go."

Kitana closed her fans and ran down the corridor, past Shang Tsung and toward the arena.

* * *

Li Yuen Ming gripped her bladed staff and walked slowly down the hallway toward Shang Tsung, the strange-speaking man in a green ninja uniform at her heels, hissing softly as he breathed.

The vine she had created to stop Tsung was smoldering, blackened and flaking at patches along its length. She felt its pain in the back of her mind, and when Tsung aimed a final fireball at its base, she felt its death. The vine fell to the ground, still coiled around Tsung's legs. Tsung untangled himself from it nimbly, and only when he was free did Ming let the vine dissipate.

"Well, that was a nasty trick," Tsung said, straightening his sleeves as he moved to the center of the corridor.

Ming stopped walking, and the man behind her stepped up beside her, shifting into a fighting stance. "I never expected it to hold you so long," she said. "I grew up hearing so much of your power, but I see now reports were exaggerated."

"My powers lie in areas other than weed extermination, Your Righteousness," Tsung answered.

"Death," said the man beside Ming.

"Yes, Reptile, in death and the harnessing of its grand power."

"You call him 'Reptile'?" asked Ming. "Not a very courteous name for a person."

"He's not a person," Tsung said. "He's a reptile. And your kind fought his kind, if I recall."

"Once. I take it you took their world, too."

"I didn't," Tsung said.

"You helped," Ming said.

"Death," snarled Reptile. "Your death."

"Yes, I think that would be appropriate," Ming said.

"You fool yourself if you think you can fight me and win," Tsung said. "Your powers were never very useful, and you won't catch me off-guard again."

"If you're so confident, why haven't we begun?"

"Manners," Tsung answered with a bow. "Ladies first."

Ming took two steps forward and swung the blade of her staff at Tsung's head, leading with her right foot. He ducked, leaning forward under the blade's arc to aim a double-fisted strike at Ming's stomach. She stepped backward, mid-swing, and allowed the swing's momentum to spin her around. She kicked straight with her left leg halfway through the spin, catching Tsung's shoulder and pushing him backward. Tsung stood up and jabbed at her face with his right hand. She pushed the handle of her weapon at the underside of his arm, pushing it upward so his strike missed, and swung the blunt end of her staff at his face. Tsung jabbed at her chest with his left hand as she swung, hitting her just under the collarbone and rocking her backward so the end of her staff whiffed by his face, just missing.

A black, two-toed boot swept around Tsung's right ankle and kicked back as Reptile moved between Ming and Tsung, pushing on Tsung's shoulders. Tsung fell back, grabbing Reptile's tunic and pulling him down on top of him as a shield. Ming stepped backward and waited for a better moment. Reptile pushed himself off Tsung, crouching on his heels. Tsung sat up at the same time. He grabbed Reptile's tunic again, placed a foot against his stomach, and rolled backward. He let go of Reptile at the height of the arc, throwing him down the hallway. Tsung let the roll extend into a backward somersault and landed, crouched, on his feet. Behind him, Reptile disappeared.

Ming blinked in surprise. Tsung threw himself at her, trying to tackle her. She stepped aside quickly enough that he only grazed her. She stumbled, righting herself a split second after Tsung. He used the split second to sweep her feet out from under her. She fell backward, her head hitting the wall, and crumpled to the floor. She rolled away from Tsung, rising onto her hands and knees. As she climbed to her feet, he approached quickly, reaching for her hair. An invisible force hit him, throwing him to the floor. He struggled wildly, pinned. He finally threw both his arms forward underneath Reptile, forming a fireball. Ming heard Reptile hit the floor beside her, but he still stayed invisible.

She ran forward to meet Tsung and tried to kick him. He blocked her kick and inched toward her, aiming a kick of his own. She dodged to the side and tried to sweep his feet out from underneath him. He jumped backward, avoiding the sweep, and settled into his fighting stance.

Ming shifted her grip a little farther away from her weapon's blade and swung it over her head, down toward the top of Tsung's. He jumped backward again and hit the top of her staff below the blade with double fists, slamming it to the ground out of Ming's control and almost ripping it out of her hands. She clung to it tightly, but as the weapon hit the ground, Tsung stepped forward and backhanded her across the cheek.

Ming was spun around and thrown to the side, where she collided with the wall. She bounced off and fell to the ground on her side, her hip landing on the handle of her weapon and sending a wave of pain down her leg. She climbed to her feet as quickly as she could and turned back around, raising her weapon.

Reptile was no longer invisible, and Tsung had his throat in his hand. He squeezed and pressed down, leaning over Reptile, who was bent over backward, his knees approaching a ninety-degree angle. Reptile gurgled and scrabbled futilely at Tsung's hand. Tsung squeezed harder, and with a final shake, Reptile went limp. Tsung dropped him.

He stood back up, pulling a handkerchief out of his coat and wrapping it around his gouged, bleeding hand. "You have no more subjects, Yuen Ming," he said. "Who will save you now?"

Ming cocked her head. "His death is a shame, but it's better this way." She twirled her staff around her arm and moved into a low fighting stance. "I've got you to myself, and I don't have to be careful not to decapitate my ally."

Tsung pointed his handkerchief-wrapped hand at Reptile's body, his fingers tensing into claws. A greenish mist rose from the body, spinning its way into Tsung's hands. Tsung breathed in deeply, then relaxed.

"That," he said, "is my power."

* * *

Ching's knees trembled as she carefully stood. She slid one foot out in front of her and tried to shift her weight forward. Her leg refused to hold her, and she fell forward and to the side, banging her hip on the ground and rolling onto her back. She panted.

Too long in bed. But she had no intention of crawling through the palace. She sat up again and used her arms and legs to push her body around, then scoot back to the bed. She grabbed the frame with both hands and pulled herself up it, augmenting her leg strength with her arm strength to get back up onto the bed.

She sat on the end, her feet flat on the floor, her arms braced on the bed. She pushed herself up again. Her legs trembled, and she teetered, throwing her arms out to the side for balance. She steadied herself slowly, looking down at her feet, adjusting the angle of her arms. Finally, she slid her foot forward again.

The door opened, letting a triangle of brilliant light from the hallway spread across the floor. Ching looked up.

The old witch stood in the doorway. She raised a hand, and Ching fell backward onto the bed.

"You're not going anywhere, pretty."


	10. Chapter Ten

**Transposition**  
by Nyohah

**Chapter Ten**

* * *

Ming raised an eyebrow. "Green fog is your power?"

Shang Tsung's smug look vanished. "No, you idiot! Taking people's souls."

"Sounds more like a hobby. My son collects books about quantum physics."

"I use souls to increase my power," Tsung said through his teeth.

"Oh, so you're more powerful, now?" Ming squinted at him. "You look the same to me."

"Appearances can be deceiving, little girl. You look like a woman now, but we both know you're just the same little girl your father was going to give to me."

"It is true that any witnesses to my father's announcement of my betrothal to you would still recognize me. You, on the other hand—you're the one whose appearance is deceiving, Shang Tsung. You no longer look like you were born before the Kitsune overthrew Ennir."

"I was born before the Kitsune overthrew Ennir," Tsung said flatly. He smiled, clasping his hands behind his back. "But yes, my masters restored my youth."

"I take it there was a reason you needed to be reborn?"

Tsung dropped his hands to his side, scowling.

"Someone killed you," Ming said.

"Liu Kang," Tsung said. "And more recently the vermin you call your son."

"He makes a mother proud," Ming said.

"And the things I'm going to do to that brat—"

"You'll have to go through me, first."

"My pleasure."

Tsung stepped forward, pulling back his fist. Ming leaned back, beyond the range of his punch, and pushed the handle of her weapon forward, catching Tsung in the chest and pushing him away. She kicked his knee with her right foot, eliciting a grunt, and with her right foot still in the air, twisted on her left to aim her heel at Tsung's nose. She wasn't fast enough, and he caught her leg. He twisted her ankle, and she twisted with it, turning back around until her right leg was wrapped around her front. She jabbed the blunt end of her staff at Tsung's nose. He hunched, and she missed his nose and whacked the end of her staff against his forehead. He dropped her foot, and they both stumbled backward, Tsung holding his forehead.

As soon as Ming's right foot hit the ground, she fired it up again in a quick front kick. Tsung pulled his hand off his forehead to block the kick. Ming attacked again with a side kick with her left leg. Tsung stepped around it and forward. He threw some punches at her face, and Ming blocked them easily, then pushed at Tsung with the handle of her weapon, trying to get some distance between them. She didn't have enough space to work up the power to move him. She stepped backward and to the side, but Tsung stepped along with her, throwing some more half-hearted punches. Ming lifted her knee toward his stomach with as much force as she could muster, but although the blow connected, it didn't push him backward, and it wasn't powerful enough to throw him off balance so she could push him away. He was too close for her to hit him with a full swing of her weapon or a kick, and she was too weak to fight effectively any other way.

She took another step backward and tried desperately to move to the side, to get the entire length of the hallway behind her. Tsung anticipated her again, stepping to the same side and inward. Ming knew what he was doing just as well as he did.

Forcing her against the wall.

* * *

Yuan skidded to a halt in the corridor that ran alongside the arena, Tung close behind him. He peered around the corner, looking down a long hallway that ended in a small arched window revealing red sky and desert wasteland. The hallway was empty, and Yuan stepped into it and opened the first door on his left. He walked to the middle of the small stone room. The bed he remembered, and the smell, and the wooden shelves lined with horrible-looking objects, most of which seemed to be shrunken bits of things that were once living.

But the bed was empty. Tung stepped beside him.

"Yuan?"

"She's not here," he said flatly. "They moved her."

"What do we now?"

"I guess we start looking." He crossed his arms. "I'm not sure where to start, though. Would they have moved her closer to them for security, do you think? Maybe one of the towers, but I never did figure out how to get into them."

"Maybe it would be easier to look for Kitana," Tung said.

"No need," came a woman's voice from behind them.

Yuan whirled in surprise. He saw Kitana in the doorway and took another step backward in shock.

"Whoa," he said.

"I would cross my arms," Kitana said dryly, "but that would just make it worse."

"Where's my mother? She went after you—"

"She sent me ahead to find you."

"What's she doing? Is she safe?"

Kitana hesitated a little. "She's safe, yes."

Yuan narrowed his eyes. "What—"

"Where's Ching?" Tung asked.

"Follow me," Kitana said. She left the room and headed farther down the hallway.

Tung caught up with Kitana before Yuan did. They stopped at an intersection. Tung studied Kitana.

"What's happened?"

Kitana sniffed and shook her head. "We'll go this way." She pointed down the new hallway, back toward the heart of the palace.

"Doesn't this lead to one of the towers?" Yuan asked. "I knew she was in one of the towers," he added to himself.

"To Shang Tsung's tower," Kitana said. "And she's not actually in the tower. Just beside it."

"Shang Tsung's one of the two we're not supposed to risk letting through the portal, right?" asked Tung.

"We don't much want to fight him anywhere, trust me," Yuan said, "but if it must be done—"

"Shang Tsung will not be there." Kitana hesitated again. "Reptile is keeping him busy." She started running down the long corridor.

Yuan and Tung ran after her.

"Reptile?" Yuan asked. "We might still have to fight Tsung, then. Reptile's not the best fighter."

Kitana said nothing but began to run faster.

"Hey!" Yuan stopped. "You left my mother to fight Shang Tsung!" he shouted.

Kitana and Tung stopped. Kitana jogged back toward Yuan, putting her finger against her mask.

"Please, don't shout," she said.

"How could you—"

"She made me." Kitana grabbed Yuan's arm hard enough to bruise and pulled him along.

Yuan shook his arm out of her grip and began to run again. "And taught you her methods," he mumbled, rubbing his arm.

They ran past the balconies. The corridor dead-ended not far past them on a short hallway with another window at the end. The landscape was identical, but the window was much larger, its arch pointed. Stone tracery broke up the view, but harsh desert light still overwhelmed the interior lights. Kitana led them down a narrow adjoining hallway. It ended in a single door, which she threw open. Ching lay on a bed inside, a wrinkled old hag standing over her, trying to force something into her mouth. Ching fought furiously, thrashing.

Yuan dashed into the room, grabbed the hag, and threw her away from Ching. The hag bounced off the floor and lay still. Ching looked up at him with wide eyes.

"Are you real?" she croaked.

Yuan nodded and pulled her into a sitting position.

Kitana stepped beside Yuan. "I can't believe she's awake."

"Hey," Tung said, "I don't think we're finished."

Yuan turned. The hag stood by the wall as unruffled as if Yuan had never attacked her, her gnarled hand gripping something that wriggled furiously. Yuan recognized her. It was the witch doctor who had tended Ching's injuries after she had fought Kintaro.

"Ching is well now, and we're leaving," Yuan said. "You can't stop us."

"Nonsense," said the witch. She tossed the thing in her hand toward Yuan. Yuan ducked, but Tung pulled a dart out of her hair and threw it toward the thing. The dart caught it mid-flight and pinned it against the wooden cabinet behind the witch. The thing ruptured, dark green goop oozing down the front of the cabinet and beginning to erode it with an audible hiss.

The witch scowled. Tung raised her sword arm and jumped forward, rapidly swinging her blade at the witch. The witch dodged her first two strikes and caught the blade on the third. Tung tugged on her sword, but the witch held it tightly.

"Weapons enchanted in the name of justice," she spat. "You never stop to think you might make them weaker."

Tung threw her entire weight back, pulling on the sword. The witch let go, and Tung stumbled backward. The witch raised the hand that had been holding the blade, palm forward. It was undamaged.

"I'm above justice," said the witch.

Kitana threw a fan at her. The witch dodged, stumbling over a pot that lay on the floor. She fell.

Yuan turned back to Ching. "Let's get out of here."

"I need help," Ching said.

He nodded and picked her up, then turned for the door.

"Wait!" Ching pointed back toward the bed. "Under it. Please."

"Tung?" asked Yuan.

She nodded and dived under the bed.

"My fan's gone," Kitana said, patting her thigh at the edge of her boot. She turned to Yuan. "Do you see it? Where is it?"

Tung stood up. "There's nothing there."

"No, it's there," Ching said. "You have to get it."

"Looking for this?" asked the witch. She was on her feet again, as composed as before, holding a small, red leather book in her hand.

Ching struggled in Yuan's arms.

"Stop it," he said. "You can't fight her now."

"You really thought you could do magic in front of me, and I wouldn't feel it?" hissed the witch.

"And my fan?" asked Kitana.

"Tied to you by weak magic." She clucked her tongue. "But the fan itself was such a lovely piece of craftsmanship I almost would have accepted your giving it to me as a repentant tribute."

Tung attacked the witch again, who blocked the blows with her arms as easily as if Tung were attacking with a plastic sword. Tung pulled her arm back and lunged, forcing her sword forward with both arms. The witch cackled, but her laughs were cut short by a crack. Tung wrenched the book, impaled on her sword, out of the witch's hands.

"Go," Kitana said, flicking her remaining fan open.

Yuan slid sideways out of the door, holding Ching in his arms, and began jogging down the hallway. Tung caught up to him quickly, her sword unbalanced by the book.

"You should have warned us about her," she said.

Yuan shook his head. "I didn't know about her."

Ching shook hers as well, her hair tickling his face. "Nobody knows about her."

* * *

Shang Tsung swung his fist toward Ming's face, and she took yet another step backward. The stone wall behind her was cold as it pressed against her back. Her bladed staff was clutched to her chest, the blade to her right, the blunt end to her left: a perfect horizontal line separating her space from Tsung's. He took another step forward, and his hands crossed the barrier, resting on the wall on either side of her head.

"Isn't this an interesting predicament you've managed to get yourself into?" he said.

Ming didn't answer, gritting her teeth and staring him in the eye.

"You had to have known it would end this way, Your Righteousness. You were always a weak fighter. Your flaws are—" He chuckled. "—innumerable. And you, stuck with a tragically undamaging elemental power. You were never meant to be a fighter."

Ming heard running footsteps and turned her head to the left, staring down the length of the grand corridor toward immense double doors.

"Someone coming to rescue you, Ming?" Tsung asked jovially, turning his head as well. "Well, they wouldn't be coming from the throne room, would they?"

Ming bowed her head, watching the ground at his feet as a dainty tendril grew up through a crack in the floor. It wound its way up his leg, but he didn't seem to notice. She looked back down the corridor. A ninja dressed in purple appeared.

"Rain!" Tsung shouted. "Go to the Edenian—"

Rain kept running. Before Tsung could finish, he had crossed the corridor.

The tendril had grown up Tsung's back and peeked over his shoulder.

"I can't believe—" Tsung said.

The tendril lightly brushed the back of his neck.

Tsung jumped back from the wall and spun around, his hand slapping the back of his neck. The tendril snapped in half near the floor, crying shrilly in Ming's mind. It wilted, falling off Tsung's back and coiling on the floor.

Ming stepped to her right, away from the wall and back down the corridor.

Shang Tsung laughed, looking down as he kicked the tiny vine, and shook his head. Ming swung her weapon.

"This only proves my—"

Tsung's words devolved into a feeble grunt as the blade of Ming's staff embedded itself into his stomach. He looked at her with wide eyes.

"I'm sorry," she said. "Did I catch you off-guard?" She wrenched the blade out, and Tsung stumbled backward, leaning against the wall. Ming swung again, higher this time, with all her strength. The blade bounced off the stone wall. Tsung's body slumped forward onto the floor.

Ming took a step backward, setting the blunt end of her staff against the ground and wiping the sweat off her forehead with her left arm. She took a deep breath and crouched, pulling at an un-bloodied section of Shang Tsung's sleeve. She held her staff near the blade and carefully wiped Tsung's blood onto his sleeve.

More running footsteps. Ming looked over her shoulder, away from Kahn's throne room.

Her son ran into view, carrying a woman in his arms, Tung behind him. She had a red leather book impaled on her sword. Ming stood and turned to them, giving the book a curious glance, but her son's shout distracted her from asking about it.

"Where'd his head go?"

The woman in his arms pointed serenely.

"Oh," Yuan said. "Good work, mom." He smiled at her, then looked down at the woman he was carrying. "This is my mom."

"Hua Ching Sa, I presume," Ming said.

The woman nodded. "I remember you," she said, then looked up at Yuan. "And you weren't kidding. She is the best mother ever. I've wanted to kill him for months."

"Let's get out of here," Tung said.

Ming nodded.

"Lead the way, Tungsten," Yuan said, grinning.

Tung started jogging, but after only a couple of steps slowed and turned. "Tung-what?"

Yuan waved her forward.

Ming smiled and followed.

* * *

The witch pulled Kitana's fan from her robes. "I do thank you for arming me." She flicked the fan open, holding it in front of her with her right hand.

Kitana slowly raised her open fan to her face, then sliced it downward diagonally, toward the witch's chest. The witch brought her fan closer to her as a protective barrier. Kitana's fan clanged against its side. She snapped it shut and rolled her arm over, twisting her body around and crouching. She thrust the fan behind her toward the witch's stomach like a knife. The witch spun her fan downward, sweeping Kitana's to the side. Kitana stood and swung her left elbow behind her toward the witch's face, over her defenses. The blow connected, and she let her momentum turn her back to face the witch then jumped backward as the witch hissed and swung her fan toward Kitana's stomach.

Kitana was heartened for half her backward jump—she had hit the witch; the witch was flesh and blood. But as she landed, the witch pushed her left hand forward, palm out. Kitana felt a force hit her chest. She stumbled but remained on her feet.

Kitana dropped to a lower stance and lunged with her fan, searching for an opening in the witch's defenses. She kept her fan closed for maneuverability, but the witch kept hers open for defense. The witch blocked one of Kitana's slices a moment too late, and Kitana winced as her fan scraped across the surface of the other, tearing the paper. Angrily, she jabbed her fan toward the witch's face. The witch blocked quickly this time, moving the open fan in front of her face before Kitana's fan reached it. Kitana's fan jabbed through the paper between two ribs. The witch snapped her fan shut with a grotesque grin, trapping Kitana's fan. Kitana held on to her fan with all her strength as the witch tried to pull it out of her grasp. She felt the muscles in her wrist protest, pulled violently the wrong way, but she held fast as the witch flailed her fan around. Finally, she wrenched her fan free and stumbled backward again.

Kitana settled back into her low stance and attacked. But the witch's defenses were even less penetrable now that she used the fan as a blade. The witch parried all of Kitana's attacks with grace. Kitana attacked as fast as she could, but the witch managed to steal the offensive away from her after a particularly good block. Kitana was no worse off. The witch's defenses were better than Kitana's, but her offensive strikes lacked the variety to catch Kitana off-guard.

Kitana caught a thrust with her fan, twisting her wrist around so her fan circled the witch's as she threw her arm to the side. She didn't disarm the witch, but she exposed her body, and Kitana raised her knee, beginning a front kick toward the witch's face.

The witch pushed her left hand out again, palm forward, and Kitana felt another shove. But even standing on one leg, it barely rocked her. She was forced to drop her leg back to the ground to keep from falling over, but she smiled under her mask as she began fighting again, her blows still not connecting.

"You have nothing but parlor tricks," she said, "and a flair for using them."

The witch blocked a thrust and quickly twisted her hand around to rap Kitana on the back of the hand with the fan's iron frame.

"My power is not yet spent," the witch replied. She raised her arms, preparing for an overhead swing, and Kitana struck quickly, leaning forward and thrusting the end of her fan into the witch's stomach. She flicked it open as soon as it connected.

A sharp pain spread across Kitana's stomach. She doubled over, instinctively pressing her left forearm against the pain, her fan arm dropping away from the witch. She closed her fan and clutched her right arm near her left, then lifted her left arm into view. Blood soaked her glove and smeared up her bare skin toward her elbow.

The witch hadn't moved. As Kitana stared at her own arm, the witch leaned over until her head was level with Kitana's.

"My parlor tricks are greater than yours," she said.

Kitana gritted her teeth and shot her left arm toward the witch's right, snatching the fan out of her hand. She stumbled toward the doorway. Rain appeared in it long before she could get there. His chest heaved and his head turned rapidly from Kitana to the witch and back.

"You're too late," Kitana snarled, moving both fans into her right hand and pressing her left against her stomach even harder, trying to slow the blood loss. She hadn't cut all the way through her skin, so her organs were safe, but she bled profusely. "They're gone by now."

Rain's gaze settled on the witch before Kitana had finished speaking. "Here you are," he said. He took a step forward, out of the doorway and toward the witch.

"I have killed Jade," he continued, "but I only saw one intruder, and it certainly wasn't the boy."

"The princess is right," the witch answered. "You've just missed him."

Rain looked back over his shoulder to the doorway, tensing as though preparing to run.

"No," the witch said. "They're gone by now."

Rain looked intently at the witch. "Are you injured? I thought you were in your—"

The witch shook her head. "I was here, but I was not in any danger. They were preoccupied with each other."

Kitana couldn't believe it. Rain watched the witch like Tanya watched Rain. She felt a queasy sensation in her stomach that had nothing to do with her wound, but Rain watching the witch meant Rain wasn't watching Kitana.

She summoned the rest of her strength and jumped forward, pushing Rain out of the way. He stumbled, and Kitana dashed through the doorway.

"The princess?" she heard Rain ask. She was too far away by the time the witch answered to make out her words.

Kitana held her left arm tightly to her stomach and ran.

* * *

Yuan entered the Edenian courtyard right behind Tung.

Chat stood up from where she had been crouching by the door. "You're back!"

His father turned. "No one's hurt?"

Yuan shook his head. "I'm glad to see we still have a portal."

Wei Yong nodded. "It flickered a while ago but stabilized."

"And what about you? Any trouble?"

"No," Chat said. "No one. It was creepy here, all alone."

"No one found us," Wei Yong said. "I did see a woman down the hallway, right after you left, but she didn't come this way."

"Shang Tsung knew where you were," Ming said.

"But Mom killed him," Yuan finished.

Wei Yong's eyes widened.

"Oh, come on," Chat said impatiently. "Let's get out of here."

Yuan nodded. "Go."

Chat ran through the portal, closely followed by Tung. Yuan stepped up to the portal, then paused, distracted by a movement in the corner of his eye. He snapped his head around to look, but saw only a shadow.

"Did you see that?" he asked.

Ching craned her neck. "See what?"

"Nothing," he answered, but the longer he stared at the shadow, the more out of place it seemed.

Wei Yong put his hand on Yuan's back. "We can't just dawdle here all day. Come on."

Yuan stepped into the portal, pushed a little by his father. The flurry of disorientation and lightheadedness lasted only a second, and he was back in Mr. Yen's cellar.

He almost dropped Ching.

The lights were off. Tung knelt beside her husband, who lay prone on the floor. She felt for his pulse. Chat stood over them both. Mr. Yen lay on the floor a few feet from Inspector Lau. Mulan huddled against the wall, shaking. There were bullet holes in the wall above her head.

Tung looked up at Yuan. "He's alive," she said. "Just unconscious."

Yuan's mother hurried around him to Mulan. She crouched beside her.

"It's all right. Let the portal go."

The crackling died away. Yuan saw movement in the corner of his eye again and spun. He saw nothing in the darkness, and turned back to the others. Mr. Yen rolled over with some effort, coughing.

"Put me down," Ching said.

Yuan let her down slowly. She leaned against the wall. Yuan hurried to Mr. Yen. "What happened?"

Inspector Lau began to stir. Tung helped him sit up.

"The power went out," Mr. Yen said, wiping his mouth, "and there was a Lin Kuei."

"Everyone hears stories of ninjas," Lau said. "You think they're exaggerated. But she was unbelievably fast. I was out in half a minute."

"So was I." Mr. Yen rubbed his head. "I didn't even know you had girls among you."

"We don't," Yuan said.

"Are you sure it was a woman?" Ming asked.

"Where's Quy Ling?" Yuan's father interrupted.

Yuan looked quickly around the cellar. Smoke was gone.

"She took him," Mulan said quietly.

Ming stood up slowly.

"Are you sure it was a Lin Kuei?" Yuan asked.

"She dressed like you," Mulan said, "and she had fire."

"Vendetta," Wei Yong said.

"Vendetta's a man," Yuan said.

Mr. Yen froze. "Do you think it's possible it was him?"

"I admit I haven't seen him in a while," Yuan said, "but I'm fairly certain he's still a man."

Mr. Yen ignored Yuan. Ming crouched again, slowly. A foot from the ground, she thumped down onto it.

"We always knew there was a traitor," Mr. Yen said.

"All along," Wei Yong said. "Vendetta. I'd say I couldn't believe it, but it's obvious in retrospect."

"Not much of a homecoming," Ching said quietly. "I think I'm cursed."

Yuan took a breath to reply, but Chat beat him to it.

"Oh, don't worry," she said, waving her hand. "We already knew you were cursed."

* * *

Shao Kahn knelt before the Demon Master's dais. His back was straight, his head erect, but he held his arms out in supplication. The witch stood to the side of the dais, staring down her nose at him in way that was starting to make him uncomfortable.

"I keep no Shadow Priests in my throne room," Kahn explained, "nor in my private chambers. I leave it to Shang Tsung and Rain, the general whose charge they are, to keep me appraised of their warnings."

"One presumes Tsung was on his way to tell you," the witch said, "but he engaged in combat and was killed."

"I will punish him for his impudence once he is back on duty."

*No,* the Demon Master said, sitting up a little. *No more of Shang Tsung's failures.*

"But, Master," Kahn protested, "all that power—"

*Ennir.* The Demon Master crooked his finger at the witch, who moved around to the front of the dais.

"I grant you, Master, with praise for your mercy," she said, bending halfway forward in a dainty bow.

*You have failed me greatly, Ennir, but Tsung has failed to achieve greatness. *

"Tsung never had the patience, Master," Ennir said.

*Rise, Kahn, and greet your peer.*

Kahn climbed to his feet with difficulty. A rush of wind swept through the room, and the air glowed green, as Shang Tsung's powers of necromancy found a new—old—owner.

Ennir rose from her bow.


	11. Interlude: Cadenza

**Transposition**  
by Nyohah

Interlude:  
**Cadenza**  
Two Thousand Years Before MK1

* * *

"More wine?"

The voice was deliberate and polite. It didn't echo in the stone chamber, but she could hear it perfectly above the sound of tumult stories below—a steady pounding amid a quieter roar. The pounding, she surmised, would be deafening to those not so high above it. Such were the benefits of impregnable towers.

Sorceress Ennir sat up on the divan where she had been lounging, dress hanging precariously. It revealed too much, she knew, but to do so in her position of power was irresistible. No one could argue her position had been won by her style of dress.

She held her diamond glass out to the man and smiled. Not at him, but at her own reflection in the mirror lining the wall behind him. She liked mirrors, especially in arrangements that showed her all sides of herself. She was vain enough, true, but above all else she liked to watch the threads. There were thousands ending in her, glinting and incorporeal, as taut as bowstrings. Never had one snapped. She never let anyone leave her service, and no one had ever tried.

Enticed by the mirror, she walked toward to it, her steps slow and deliberately in time with the pounding. She held her hands up to it but didn't quite touch it. Fingerprints would ruin everything. She was close enough that she could see nothing but herself, her facial features blurred, too close to focus on, her back turned to the man who had spoken, her wine forgotten. It was an arrogant gesture, but that had been her intent.

The thousands of threads made her look, she admitted, like a pincushion (and perhaps she overcompensated with her style of dress even though no one else could see them). Their meaning, however, made them too dear to her to ever wish away. Only one of the thousands of threads began in her, and this was her favorite. She traced its reflection in the air with a finger. It looped and danced around itself in patterns like Mandalorian embroidery before ending, like all the others, in her own flesh.

The man behind her had only two threads. One, flapping gently in some ghostly breeze, trailed out of sight, tied, no doubt, to the one who had sent him. The other withdrew rapidly back into him, held so close to his body that it was almost invisible to her.

It wasn't her only clue that this Shang Tsung wasn't here strictly for the purposes he claimed.

Clones, he had said. He wanted to learn the noble art of cloning. But he didn't look the type that fancied himself a warlord. He had no need of armies, and if he did, his master would provide.

Ennir was legendary for her clones. They were convenient, and it was for this convenience that most would-be warlords wanted them. But Ennir didn't value her clones because of their convenience. She valued them because they were so easily bound. Tsung, she expected, would understand this, had he actually come for clones.

An explosion below them made her reflection tremble and the wine bottle rattle in its ice. She twisted and arched her body backward to look at the man, forcing a small, sweet smile. Men were men, eternally, after all, and she had half a mind to kill this one.

Ennir was legendary for more than just clones, and she knew what interested this Tsung, this human. For he was just a human, an ordinary human with a soul-consuming drive for power and a handful of necromancy skills. Necromancy was her great art and immortality a difficult gift to wield. This war she had fashioned had gone on for ages. The so-thought eternal Mandalorians had changed, irrevocably, so long ago the Edenians could not remember their true form. Great Edenian civilizations had risen and fallen around her, the only true constant the realm had. The humans had, sometime, discovered civilization. She hadn't paid much attention. And now, although the Edenians and their new great society, the Kitsune, had decided they wanted Ennir out, when the next great change of power took place, Ennir would be exactly where she had always been, standing behind everything and gently coaxing her war the way she wanted it to go.

True patience, millennial patience, made immortality the power it was. Ennir doubted this Tsung capable of it. A hundred years his lifespan? She could lose her war steadily for a hundred years, and neither she nor her master—Tsung's master—would give an order in concern.

"I must admit," Tsung said, settling himself on her divan, "the pounding is getting on my nerves."

Ennir turned back to the mirror. "It sounds like a funeral march, don't you think?" Her breath fogged the glass.

"Very fitting." Tsung took a sip of his wine. "But I fear, with the Kitsune below, it's your men that are dying."

"They're not men," she dismissed.

"I suppose you could argue that."

"They're not. I made them, and I know all there is to know of them. They fear their own deaths much less than the idea that they might not die for me. They're puppets who think and move on their own, nothing more."

"And you, wielding all the strings."

Ennir glanced back at him, grinning fiercely at the pun he didn't realize he had made.

"You must have some extraordinary power," Tsung continued, "to control an army as large as yours."

"Yes, it's lovely," she answered girlishly, tracing her finger in circles in the air just in front of the mirror. The human thought he was clever, speaking in metaphors, trying to broach the true subject from beneath, full of himself and his perceived subtlety. She glanced to her left in the mirror, where she could see his reflection, fuzzily. He stretched out casually, filling the space she had vacated. She looked back to her own blurred reflection, raising an eyebrow. This Shang Tsung fancied himself a spider, but she had the web.

"I think you may be wasting your power on this war," Tsung said. "The only true progress you made against the Mandalorians happened long ago. Yet the war rages on, and you toss away your subjects like you can replenish an army overnight."

"They're clones, dear Tsung. I could."

"Even clones take some time—"

She whirled. "You speak of clones, but we both know why you're really here. And if you can't even realize that a steady war means a steady supply of bodies separated from a steady supply of souls, and a steady supply of souls means endless power, then I suggest you stop trying to wheedle my secrets from me and flee down into the chaos before I demonstrate the concept for you by separating _your_ soul from _your_ body."

Tsung was unfazed. "Truthfully, then? I worry for your well being. The Kitsune have made much progress. They're stronger than your clones, and they're driven. You always have to worry about the disciplined, driven ones. You initial instinct may be to mock them, but they will never cease to surprise you with their stupidity. They're almost as willing to die to kill you as your clones are willing to die to save you."

Ennir turned slowly back to the mirror, resisting the urge to spit. Humans were so smug about their progress. It was their perspective lying to them, nothing more. She had seen thousands of years of civilizations and their so-called progress, yet humans were neither stronger nor smarter than they had been initially. They used their strengths to coddle themselves, to weaken themselves, and they called it progress.

"Don't you think the pounding has grown louder?" Tsung asked.

As though on cue, the Shadow Priests flanking her door hissed and stepped in front of it, blocking the entrance.

Ennir turned in shock. Tsung swirled the wine in his glass, unconcerned. She curled her fingers into claws and crept toward him, preparing to lunge. Pounding on her door interrupted her sudden drive for violence. Female shouts came through the door, then an axe.

Tsung looked up at her and smiled. Ennir calmed herself and straightened, turning back to her mirror, far enough away that she could see her entire body in perfect focus. She always looked small from a distance, and it seemed from sight alone that she was trapped by the threads of loyalty, tied in place.

Ennir watched in horror as the threads snapped, and she was free, a lone girl with a single twirling thread idly twisting back on itself around her. Reflected in the mirror, Shang Tsung raised his wine glass in a toast.


	12. Movement II: Ritenuto, Chapter Eleven

**Transposition**  
by Nyohah

Movement II:  
**Ritenuto**

**Chapter Eleven**

* * *

The door opened. Enmity stared at the ground and took three steps forward. She knelt gracefully, settled back onto her heels, and leaned forward as far as she could, holding her face just off the ground.

"I have brought him, Master," she said. "He is secured in a cell in the lowest level."

Her father's voice was low. "Excellent." He paced for a few seconds. "Four guards?" he asked suddenly.

"Yes, sir."

"Yes," he repeated. "Yes." He sounded distracted. "Any trouble at the mansion?"

Enmity hesitated, but only for a moment. "No, sir."

Vendetta didn't notice. "Yes, excellent."

He began to pace again. Enmity counted the seconds in her head and breathed shallowly in time with them. Two in, two out.

When her count reached two hundred, she spoke warily. "Sir? Can I be of further use, sir?"

"Oh." He sounded surprised that she was still there. "No. No, I have nothing more for you. You are dismissed."

Enmity rose, still staring at the ground. She backed out of the door, and only when it had closed did she sigh.

* * *

It was getting dark. In fact, as Yuan Li slowly climbed the stairs out of Mr. Yen's cellar, it was getting very dark. Chat had, following Mr. Yen's vague and partially inaccurate instructions, finally found the single flashlight in the cellar, but Ching had stopped her from turning it on. The cellar had small windows, and they didn't know who might see the light.

Yuan hesitated on the top stair, rubbed his hands on his pants, and pushed down on the door handle as slowly as he could. The mechanics inside the handle clicked perturbingly. Yuan pushed the door a little forward until the latch tongue clicked out again and waited tensely, ready to pull the door shut if someone tried to ambush him preemptively.

Nothing happened.

Yuan inched the door open and peeked out. The earth's rotation had not had the consideration to pause for Yuan during the painstakingly slow door-opening operation, and darkness had fallen completely. He couldn't see a thing.

He slipped sideways out the door and took a step forward, his eyes wide and futilely scanning the area around him. He reached carefully behind him until his hand met the door and pushed it shut.

It caught on something.

Yuan jerked his arm away in surprise, then whirled, senses alive with the knowledge that something was there. He jumped at the door, pushing it with both hands. It slid smoothly shut. Nothing there.

Movement behind him. He spun and threw his arms around wildly, lunging in arbitrary directions, trying to find the thing. His flailings accomplished nothing but to disorient him in the darkness. He stopped and forced himself to listen.

A floorboard creaked.

He knew that creaky floorboard.

Yuan lunged.

Yuan ran straight into a waist-high stand, knocking it over and falling painfully on top of it.

Wrong creaky floorboard. He lay there a moment, then decided his only remaining option was to groan and try to find a way off the fallen table that wouldn't cause him further injury.

The door handle clicked again, and a beam of light shone on him. He closed his eyes.

"Are you all right?" asked Hua Ching Sa.

Yuan forced his eyes open to look at her, but he couldn't really see her behind the flashlight. "Tripped," he said. "Turn that off, will you?"

"I think the evidence points to your needing the light." She held her hand down to him.

He took it and pulled himself up. He had heard amusement in her voice, but he wasn't amused. "No, I mean it," he said. "There was something here."

"I think if it was going to get you, it would have gotten you already."

"Well, point it that way, then," Yuan said, pointing toward the kitchen.

She did, and they crept forward.

"Are you sure there was something here, Yuan?" Ching asked lightly. "You didn't just hear something? Your electronics used to pop all the time, for no reason."

"I didn't hear it," he answered peevishly, stopping in front of the closet by Mr. Yen's back door. "I felt it." He opened the closet door and stepped inside.

"You touched it?"

"It was caught in the door."

Ching didn't reply. Yuan reached outside the closet, felt around for her arm, and then pulled her in front of the closet doorway, directing the flashlight inside. He tried to ease open the breaker box on the wall in the back of the closet, but the metal creaked more loudly than the door handle had clicked—but probably not as loudly as Yuan had crashed to the ground.

"How did it know we were there?" Ching asked as Yuan scanned the breakers.

"Huh?" Yuan looked back at her. "Well, it was—" He stopped. It had been down there with them; of _course_ it knew. But he decided that an invisible creature trying to get out of the basement was less likely than a ninja trying to get into the basement when a ninja had in fact gotten into the basement earlier that night.

Yuan shrugged and turned back to the breaker box. "Maybe it didn't. Maybe it would've gotten a very rude surprise when it found out that hardened veterans of combat in Outworld were waiting down there to pummel it."

Ching stretched her arms in front of her and twisted them around each other. The light swiveled around dizzyingly. "It would've been funny," she agreed. "Your mother probably could've taken it."

Yuan nodded. All the breakers were flipped on. He refused to concede defeat easily, however, and began to flip them off, one by one. The racket was unbearable. He could see Ching flinch out of the corner of his eye.

He looked at her. "Moment of truth," he said, and started to flip the breakers back on. Nothing happened. He squeezed past Ching and out of the closet, reaching for the nearest light switch, just to check. He flipped the switch up, then wiggled it up and down. Nothing.

Yuan shrugged. "I guess we'll come up here, anyway. No one's killed us yet, right?"

"Mm," said Ching. "We're trapped down there, only one way out. If the thing came back and managed to get in..."

"This building's like a maze," Yuan agreed, stepping around her again. "I wonder," he muttered, stepping back into the closet.

"Idea?" Ching asked hopefully.

He reached up and ran his hand along the shelf until he knocked over a long, heavy cylinder. He picked up the second flashlight and flicked it on.

"Oh," Ching said. "That's a little anticlimactic."

"Well, Mr. Yen will have to find the rest of them," Yuan said.

Ching raised an eyebrow, then clutched suddenly at the silver collar on her neck.

Yuan rushed forward, almost dropping the flashlight. "What is it?" he asked, panicky.

She shook her head. "It just chafes."

Yuan frowned. "We'll get it off."

She closed her eyes and nodded. "Just let's not do it with a welder, okay?"

Yuan smiled. "I promise we'll keep it as a last resort. Laser cutters come well before welders, possibly even before plasma—"

"Psst, hey!"

Yuan and Ching both whirled, flashlights held like weapons.

The loud whisper came again. "Where are you guys?"

They looked at each other, then walked back toward the cellar. Chat had half her body—one arm, one leg, and her face—sticking out between the wall and the door, which she held tightly to herself.

"Oh, there you are," she said in her normal voice. "We thought maybe you died. Is there power?"

Yuan shook his head.

"Oh, we're stuck down here?" she asked incredulously.

Yuan shook his head again.

Chat's brow furrowed, and she looked at Ching.

"We decided it's safer up here," Ching said.

Chat smiled, then threw the door open the rest of the way. She looked over her shoulder and yelled, "Come on, everyone! Let's go upstairs."

It sounded like a stampede of elephants as the six people still in the cellar hurried up the stairs. They pooled in the area just outside the door, a little apart and facing Yuan and Ching. Yuan ran his flashlight across them, checking that they were still all right. Mulan and his mother were equally pale; and Inspector Lau and Mr. Yen stood uneasily, still dizzy, it appeared, from being knocked unconscious; but his father and Tung, who discreetly supported her husband, looked alert and well.

Mr. Yen took one hand off his head to point behind Ching and Yuan, toward the kitchen. "In there, I think," he said. "At the very least we can get some ice for myself and the inspector."

They filed into the kitchen, those who were less steady on their feet immediately pulling out chairs. Yuan balanced the flashlights on overturned pans as makeshift lamps, then took his place around the table as his father handed Mr. Yen a towel full of ice.

Mr. Yen nodded his thanks. "I suppose it's time to talk about your mission. You're all here, so I assume your half went better than ours."

In other circumstances, it might have been a joke. Yuan swallowed. "We ran into several other fighters while we were there, but we managed to escape from all of them. Mom even came out on top."

"Oh?" Mr. Yen asked. "Who was it?"

"It was Shang Tsung," Ming answered, distantly.

Mr. Yen froze. "I— That's— Huh. Congratulations," he said uncertainly.

"I was pleased," Ming said.

"It was rather remarkable," Ching said. "I was much more than pleased."

Mulan stood up suddenly. "I've got to go look outside."

"There's a window there, Mulan," Mr. Yen said, pointing at the kitchen window. "There's no need to wander."

"That window won't work," she said, and jogged out of the kitchen.

"Mulan!" Mr. Yen called.

Tung stood. "I'll go," she said, then hurried after Mulan.

"They'll be okay," Yuan said, after a moment. "Tung was amazing fighting this old hag thing that masquerades as a doctor."

"I guess so," Mr. Yen said. "What?"

"There was a hag."

"She was a witch," Ching said slowly. "Or she used to be a witch, but she didn't have any power anymore."

"Except that she did," Yuan said, "because she kept doing some pretty crazy stuff, and Tung's weapon couldn't harm her."

"So what you're saying," Inspector Lau said, "is that she had been a witch, but she wasn't anymore, except that she still was. Is my head worse than I thought it was?"

"No," Ching said. "She used to be more powerful, and nobody knew that she still had any power at all. Nobody in the palace knew that she was any kind of a threat, until she started fighting us. I think Shang Tsung had her real power."

"Ennir?" Ming asked with a jolt.

"You fought Sorceress Ennir?" Yuan's father asked.

"I didn't," Yuan said. "Ching didn't. It was Tung and Kitana."

"You know about her?" Ching asked.

"Everybody knows about Ennir," Wei Yong scoffed.

Mr. Yen nodded.

"I think it might just be everyone who ever worked closely with Rah Cai Yue," Ming said.

Mr. Yen raised a hand in conciliation and nodded again.

"Hey, everyone?"

They turned to see Mulan hovering in the doorway, Tung just behind her.

"What is it?" asked Mr. Yen.

"It's not just us," Mulan said. "I knew it wasn't just us. I couldn't see the lights of the little store out by the highway out that window."

The residents of Yanxubin all turned instinctively to look out the window, then turned, almost as one, back to Mulan.

"The whole town is dark," she said. "Nobody has power."

"Why would that female Lin Kuei cut everyone's power?" asked Wei Yong.

"Maybe she blew out the whole grid when she cut our power," Mr. Yen said. "I'm not sure how she could manage it..."

"Maybe if it was put together really badly," Yuan said. Then he waved his hand. "I'll figure it out. We're talking about more important things."

"Oh?" asked Tung, sliding back into the seat beside her husband. "What's that?"

"The crazy witch you fought in Outworld. My parents know about her."

Tung's eyes widened. "What was she?"

"She was a sorceress," Wei Yong said, "a long time ago on Edenia—another planet, like Mandalore, that's now a part of Outworld."

"Kitana's Edenian," Ching said.

"She completely ruled the planet for...thousands of years, probably," Wei Yong continued. "She was known for necromancy—power over the souls of the dead—like Shang Tsung. Ennir was also notorious for cloning. She had whole armies of clones. And then one day she was overthrown by the Kitsune, who were an elite clan of female warriors."

"Female ninjas?" asked Inspector Lau.

"No," said Ming. "More like guards."

"And Ennir was never heard from again," Wei Yong said. "Until tonight, apparently. We all thought she was dead."

"No one's ever really dead when they're tied to the service of that demon," Ching said grimly. "But as far as I know she hadn't died. She had just withered away, living. Waiting. She was patient."

"If there was one thing Shang Tsung lacked," Yuan said, "it was patience. I mean, the only reason we got through that last tournament was that it was thrown together too quickly."

Ching nodded. "That witch is going to give us a lot of trouble."

* * *

Sorceress Ennir sat on a worn and faded divan on the top floor of the north tower of Shao Kahn's palace. The north tower had always been her tower, and it was identical, in structure at least, to the south tower where Shang Tsung had lived. Over the years of her decline, it had lost what splendor it once had, as Shang Tsung's living quarters had become more and more richly furnished. If she wanted, she could plunder the south tower and take the many luxuries Tsung had accumulated. But she needed nothing of Tsung's that was not originally hers.

Rain knelt in front of her. "Is there anything I can get you?" he asked. "This place is not fit for a person of your stature."

"You read my mind," she answered, marveling at the ninja's thread. It shot from his heart and ended near her diaphragm, stretched so tightly between them that if she could pluck it, its music would fill the room. She still remembered the day it had appeared. In the last few hours, she had regained a few dozen of her previous thousands of threads, but when this ninja's had appeared, years ago, it had been the first thread tied to her besides her own for the many centuries since her fall. She had been baffled as to its origins and remembered even more clearly the day she had finally met Rain, when he had first become a general of Shao Kahn's armies. She had been struck again, because the thread tied to her was the only one the young man had—and he didn't even know who she was.

She had revealed herself to him slowly, so that it had taken a full year of her attentions until he realized who she was. At that moment, he had knelt before her for the first time and swore to her with a fervor she had never seen from him the loyalty she already knew he had. It was no coincidence that her old Shadow Priests, torn from her and forbidden to obey any of her commands, followed Rain like they followed no one else. They had known where his loyalty lay before even Ennir had.

"I'll send in cleaners," Rain said. "They'll have the place looking like new, and then you can choose anything you want, and I'll have it brought up immediately."

"Mirrors," Ennir said, waving at the threads surrounding her with a gnarled hand. "Lots of mirrors. Whole walls of mirrors."

"Absolutely," Rain said. "What else?"

"Furniture is a weak beginning," she answered. "We have much to do, and none of it depends on furniture. We lost Mileena to Mandalorians, and that is a sharp blow."

Rain bowed his head in apology. "I failed you. I should have gone immediately to guard her room after killing Jade, but I came here to see what you would have me do. I should have known you would be where you could do the most good."

Ennir shook her head. "A sharp blow only means we need to hone our advantage. I'll need my Shadow Priests to begin with. Gather them here. They know how to build what I need."

"If it is my place," Rain said, "I'd like to ask what you are planning."

"Do you realize why I had you kill Jade?" Ennir asked.

"She was traitorous, like the princess. She was planning to betray us all to the Earth warriors."

"Jade had less choice in that matter than you might think," Ennir said flatly. "She was a clone, a very specialized clone, but badly made by an amateur. Her very existence offended me, and her death was a vanity. But if you think of Jade, you will know where we are headed."

"Are you going to rebuild your armies?" Rain asked. "I would offer myself as—"

She waved her hand dismissively. "Shao Kahn has armies. We need no more armies. What we lack are specialties." She straightened herself. "I am going cook up a very useful specialty."

* * *

The study in the back corner of the lower floor of Mr. Yen's house was usually cozy and warm, lit only by a reading lamp. Under the carefully directed light of exactly seven flashlights pillaged from various closets around Mr. Yen's mansion, it took on an entirely different character. It almost made the room feel as sterile as Yuan would have liked it to be for the work at hand. He didn't intend to cut anyone open, but based on his luck so far, it would only be a matter of time before he really did bring in a welding torch. There were some very small, maneuverable models in the metal workshops on the second floor of the building.

Ching grimaced as Yuan tried to push the head of the metal cutters he was holding farther between Ching's neck and the silver collar around it. He got it a few millimeters further in, then pressed the handle together as hard as he could. Maybe this time...

The metal didn't give. He tried to push the metal cutters even further in.

"Yuan?" Ching asked calmly.

"What?" he grumbled.

"I think you're cutting me."

He jerked the cutters out and dropped them, then winced, thinking he should have pulled them out more slowly. Ching placed her hand to her neck and rubbed it gently.

"Sorry," he said.

She shook her head dismissively.

He leaned in, gently pushing her hand away, and peered at the collar. He hadn't even dented it. He hadn't even _scratched_ it.

"Uh," he said, taking a deep breath and running his hands through his hair. "I think this is going to take a little more power."

"Do you remember what I said about welding torches?" Ching asked flatly.

Yuan nodded. "There's got to be something in the building that will do it," he said. "This is an electronics place. It's all really delicate, probably even more delicate than you, and they work on it all the time."

"You think something for electronics will get this demon collar off my neck?" Ching asked, even more flatly.

"I did think of maybe trying to soften a bit of it with a soldering iron, but only for a second or two because I remembered about the specific heat of metal, and you with a collar of silver and third-degree burns is worse than you with just a collar of silver."

Ching stared at him.

"Let me just go ask Mr. Yen," Yuan said, heading toward the door. "He's got to have something we can—"

"Yuan," Ching said firmly. "Wait."

He froze in place, reaching for the door handle. "What?"

"This collar," she said, putting her thumb underneath it, "is magical. It's a demon-made magical collar."

"Yes," Yuan said, slowly.

"Don't you think we ought to try to get it off with magic?"

Yuan squinted at her.

"My sister," she said.

"Well, I don't really believe in magic," Yuan said. "I mean, sure some of us have natural abilities that appear to be magic to the ignorant, but they're all manipulating matter and energy in a way that, given the right equipment for observation, could be described mathematically. And once you've described something mathematically, it's only a matter of time before you can manipulate it and even synthesize it."

"Yuan," Ching said. "We're not going to fight this scientifically. Not this collar, not that witch, not the demon, not _anything_. We're going to fight it magically. And we need all the help we can get. All the _magical_ help we can get."

"Of course," Yuan said. "I agree. Right now we need nothing more than every single person in the universe who both has special abilities that one would identify as magic and would be firmly on our side in this battle to be here, with us, or at least somewhere they can do something to help us. But that's not because of some universal failing of science. It's because we haven't advanced far enough yet. Look, I'm not saying that we could replicate scientifically what some people are able to do naturally, magically, right now, and maybe not even a thousand years from now. But I made an invisible robe scientifically—synthesized, scientifically, one of the staples of magic. The mere fact that science and so-called magic can be integrated should be proof enough that even magic is scientifically sound. Mr. Yen will have to tell you about his light-swords; it's incredible."

Ching stood up.

"I'll go get her," Yuan said, and headed for the kitchen.

Tung was cutting up towels, preparing bandages. She looked up at Yuan and smiled.

"Ching wants you, Tungsten," he said.

She stood, then, with an "oh", retrieved a small, red leather book with a hole sliced through it off the counter behind her. "I'll guess she'll want this, won't she?"

Yuan gave her a small smile. "It's about that collar thing," he said as they left the kitchen. "We might need your advice."

They walked the short distance to the study, and Yuan opened the door.

"Tung," Ching said. "Can you get this off?"

"I'll try," Tung said. She knelt beside Ching, setting the red leather book on the floor, and gently touched the collar. She pulled her hand away immediately. "It's dark," she said. "Is it very full of magic?"

Yuan huffed in the corner, but Ching gave him a look that made him hold his peace.

"I would think so," Ching answered. "They used it to keep me unconscious and to torture me. If nothing else it channels well."

"If it's dependent enough on the dark magic," Tung said, "I might be able to break it if we suck the magic out first."

She stood and unwrapped her sword from her arm, but she didn't pull it out of the sheath. Yuan watched curiously, as she took a step back, and held the sheath in front of her, positioning a _v_-shaped piece of decorative metal on the end. Yuan leaned toward her, edging closer. She turned suddenly, giving him a sharp look and pushing him to the side.

"Out of the light," she said. She positioned the piece of metal again, and Yuan, who had previously been paying too much attention to the metal itself, saw that it reflected the light of the flashlights as a perfect copy of itself on Ching's neck. Tung focused the point of the projection on the collar. The light began to tremble, and Yuan looked back at Tung to see that her hand was shaking, her jaw set. Yuan looked back at Ching and felt his eyes widen as the rune etchings that ringed the collar began to fade. When they had disappeared completely, Tung lowered her sword, walked back to Ching, and grabbed the collar. It crumbled in her hand, breaking into uneven, pebble-sized fragments of silver. Where the collar had been, Ching's neck was reddened by a rash, and where Yuan had cut her, it was smeared with blood.

"You're bleeding?" Tung asked, shocked.

"That was from earlier," Yuan said. "Not you."

"I'll get a bandage," Tung said, hurrying out of the study.

As soon as Tung left, Ching leaned over and brushed the fragments of silver off the book. She held it in her lap for a few moments, looking down at it quietly. Then she lifted her head and held it out to Yuan.

"It's a little late to mean anything, I know," Ching said. "But I still want you to have it."

Yuan accepted it gently. "What is it?"

"It's just a letter," she said. "I wrote it to you during the tournament."

"No, it means a lot," he said, holding the book up with a greater sense of its value. He rubbed a finger along the slice Tung's sword had punched through it. "I hope it's still legible."

Ching smiled. "It should be. I write big." She demonstrated in the air. "I haven't had a lot of practice."

Yuan rubbed the leather with his thumbs. "Is it good to be free?" he asked quietly.

"I'm not sure," Ching said. "I haven't had much experience."

Yuan tilted his head. "I imagine it can't be worse, right?"

Ching shook her head almost imperceptibly. "It can't be."

The door creaked behind him, startling him. Tung carried a small metal first aid kit. She knelt on the floor in front of Ching again. "Lie down," she ordered. "I'll bandage your neck, and then I need to make sure you are not still under the effects of some dark magic."

Ching looked back up at Yuan, resisting staunchly as her sister tried to push her back while swabbing her neck.

"I'll go," he said. "Check up on people, and then...read this." He closed the door gently behind him and began to wander slowly through the dark hallways.

He found his mother standing against the wall by the cellar door, dimly lit by the light escaping from the kitchen. "Anyone down there?" he asked, pointing at the door.

She shook her head. He leaned against the door beside her. "So, tell me about this Rah Cai Yue."

"Oh?" she asked, her voice girlish. "What do you want to know?"

"I suppose we can start with why he seemed to talk so much about that witch Ennir."

"It's not what you think," she said quickly, turning her head to look at him. "I told you he liked history, didn't I?"

"Yes."

"Well, he talked about it all the time. Nonstop, really," she added with a smile, "no matter whether those he was talking to cared at all about what he was saying. She was woven through a good deal of history."

"And he liked to talk about that history?"

She gave a little nod. "It was such early history that she was really more of a myth. The Kitsune always insisted that she had existed, but the rest of us weren't so sure." She jerked her head a little to the side, a tiny shrug. "There were a couple of years we were all convinced she was real—I mean the Honor Guard. But that turned out to be lies."

"What did?"

"We thought we ran into some remnants of her clones, but we didn't. We were...misled. It's why we all knew about it, instead of just me."

"He would have told you about it, but no one else?"

"Oh, he told me everything," Ming said, looking sideways at him. "I'm certain I'm the only one he ever told about the time he accidentally created and got sucked into a portal to Outworld—he was a gravity elemental, I've told you, yes? He lacked a little focus sometimes, so I'm not surprised he managed to do it. I'm just not sure how he got back safe. Even just to me, his story changed every time."

Yuan turned away. "You seem to have been very close to Mr. Rah," he said.

"Mm."

"Very close to him," he continued deliberately, turning to look down at her, "and extremely fond of him."

She looked at him for a few moments, then shifted her attention to the wall. "We were," she admitted slowly, "a little more than friends."

"How much more?" he asked quietly.

She examined her fingernails for a moment. "I wanted to marry him."

"But you didn't?"

She shook her head. He waited for an explanation, but she didn't speak.

"Do you regret it?"

"I always regretted it," she answered shortly, as though it were obvious.

"If you could go back," Yuan continued determinedly, "would you still marry my dad?"

She didn't answer.

After a few seconds, Yuan took a deep breath, and casually said, "Well, if it makes the choice any easier, if you hadn't married my dad, I wouldn't exist."

"Oh, of course I would marry him," Ming answered, laughing. "I couldn't give up my son."

"Good, then," Yuan said, laughing with her. "As long as we're agreed."

* * *

As dawn broke in Yanxubin, China, a man lay prone and unmoving in a dirt road on the outskirts of town. After a moment, he exhaled irritably, causing dirt to swirl off the road around his face. He pushed himself to his feet slowly, rubbed the dirt off his face, and began to check himself for injuries.

=You are not hurt. We sense no heat from injuries.=

The man whirled. A ninja stood on the road behind him, dressed in the same manner as the man was. It was like looking at a reflection, save for two easily noticeable differences. The other ninja wore white, instead of a light ice blue. And the other ninja wore its mask. It always wore its mask. The man wasn't even sure it had a face unless it pulled one from his memory.

"You're here, then?" he said. "But you couldn't catch me when I just fell out of the sky?"

=We were as startled as you to be so suddenly pulled here, Li Nei Jen,= the ninja mewed, shaking its head slowly, its voice ringing in his head. =Even under normal circumstances it takes time to make bubble to catch—=

"I get it, Honor," the man dismissed, turning away from the ninja again to glare at the landscape around him, vexing in its familiarity. He crossed his arms and snorted.

=You are not joyed,= asked Honor, =to be in your home again?=

"No," Sub-Zero answered. "I'm really not."


	13. Chapter Twelve

**Transposition**  
by Nyohah

**Chapter Twelve**

* * *

Kitana leaned her head against the side of the carriage hopelessly. The carriage rocked as it was pulled along an uneven road as far from Shao Kahn's palace as a night's travel could take her. Her head bumped against the side of the carriage in time with the bumps on the road, but she was too tired to care. She was too tired to even care that she had no idea where she was going and no idea what she would do when she got there.

She had traded her fancy silk uniform for bandages in a dirty back alley and managed to wring a patched old robe out of the deal as well. The robe was made of some sort of coarsely woven cloth she couldn't identify but knew she didn't like. Developing a full body rash was exactly the sort of unlikely catastrophe she needed to actually make her situation worse.

She didn't know what she was going to do. Her insurrection had failed before it had ever begun, and her only two allies in the realm were dead. She had allies on Earth, of course, but she hadn't gone to Earth. She could've held out. She could've tried to escape with them. But if she hadn't stayed to fight the witch, it was possible no one would have made it to Earth. Kitana had done the right thing. Kitana always knew what the right thing was. It just wasn't always helpful, and she didn't always know how to go about doing it.

So she sat on a crowded carriage, trying to get as much distance as possible between her and anyone who might enact Shao Kahn's inevitable execution order. But she couldn't escape his armies; it was useless to try. If she wasn't near the palace, she was still in nomad territory. And if she wasn't in nomad territory, she was in Shokan territory. And if she wasn't in Shokan territory, she was in Centaurion territory, or even worse, stuck between Shokan and Centaurion territory, where she would most likely end up a nameless, unnoticed casualty of an eternal rivalry. She could run until the end of time, and if she stayed in Outworld, she could only get from bad to worse.

What she needed was an ally. Someone who knew the area, knew the locals, and knew how to put out subtle feelers for others who might support her cause. She instinctively looked around the carriage, as though she might be able to pick out an ally by sight alone, and was shocked to discover that somewhere in the last two stops, the rest of the carriage had been filled with nomads.

She shifted uncomfortably, suddenly awkward. She had to get off at the next stop. She had gone farther into nomad territory than she had intended already. A pretty face like hers could attract too much attention so far out. Not that she was sure her face was all that pretty after hours of helpless crying, but it wasn't how pretty her face was that mattered as much as that it was pretty enough not to have rows of giant teeth.

The carriage stopped again not long after her realization, but the time she spent knowing she was cooped up in a carriage with a couple dozen nomads was far too long for Kitana. She got off the carriage, breathing in the dry, dusty air and looking around to find somewhere to get some water.

None of the signs were in Edenian. Kitana took a closer look at the street and realized she was in no better position than she had been in the carriage. She was the only non-nomad in sight.

"What have we got here?" asked a rough voice behind her. Kitana turned to see a semicircle of nomads advancing toward her. They looked slightly more orderly than the others milling around, and the one who had spoken had a prominent insignia badge on his tunic.

Military. A captain and some of his men were actually ganging up on her. Kitana almost couldn't believe it. She tensed anyway.

"Haven't we told the palace that we'll be ready when they need us, but we'll do the readying?" the nomad continued.

"More than once," answered the nomad to his left. He wore a subtler, cruder insignia: a plus sign painted near his collar. Apparently the nomads had begun to invent their own officer positions. "I've logged them all," Plus-Sign continued. "We can include a copy when we return our complaint."

"Yeah," the captain answered. "We'll have to word the complaint carefully, though, or they'll think we aren't serious."

The soldiers spread out, moving to close the circle around her. Kitana glanced over her shoulder. There was nowhere to run, nowhere to lose a group of soldiers, and the street was busy, but not crowded.

And it was too late, anyway; she was already surrounded.

"Did you have a phrasing in mind?" Plus-Sign asked politely.

It was a show, all for her benefit. They were trying to scare her, but she knew what they were doing, and they couldn't intimidate her. She raised her chin and looked the captain in the eyes.

"You know, I did, actually," the captain replied, staring back at her. "I thought we would return to them a pretty little head. Teach them not to send any more pretty little faces."

It was a show. It was a show, and Kitana was going to die.

* * *

Sub-Zero walked grumpily alone through a field west of Yanxubin, weaving through occasional clusters of feeding horses. He wasn't grumpy because he was alone. He was grumpy because he wasn't alone, but Honor had never really grasped the concept of walking.

The Vyrenchi appeared in front of him again, the air around it wavering as though Honor gave off heat. It didn't, though. And Sub-Zero would know, having walked completely through Honor once, more than a year ago. The Vyrenchi had explained to him when they first met that it was an energy being, whatever that meant. He had assumed that Honor was some sort of specter, existing on an entirely separate plane. Walking through the creature had taught him that although Honor may not be a physical being, it had a defined physical presence. It had felt as though every bit of him was buzzing, and he had understood what the strange feeling had been in the moment Honor had entered his body in order to save his life by teleporting him away from a vengeful Scorpion. He had originally mistaken the feeling for death.

=We approach your house?= asked Honor, its constricted, nasally voice flitting into his mind.

"It's past this field, where my father keeps the horses," Sub-Zero replied irritably. But that brought up an excellent question. Why were the horses already in the field if his father wasn't around doing the morning chores? The sun was rising quickly, but it hadn't been up long enough for his father to finish, and if the reason the field was devoid of humans was because his brother was supposed to do the chores but hadn't woken up yet, then the horses would still be in their stable.

Sub-Zero slowed down, quieting his steps as suspicious thoughts began to clamor in his head—thankfully, his own suspicious thoughts. He carefully watched the outline of his parents' seemingly abandoned house as he slipped between two large horses. A male silhouette walked out from behind his parents' house, and Sub-Zero froze, mostly hidden by the horses. He took a slow step backward, leaning down a little to hide himself more fully. Another man appeared around the corner, the blackness of his clothing broken by ceremonial garb in a rich brown, and Sub-Zero realized he hadn't been watching a silhouette at all. The first man was dressed entirely in black, not yet fully initiated.

Lin Kuei.

He watched until the men walked over to the back door and began to pound on it, their backs to him. He scurried from behind one horse to another a little closer to his house. The new horse was facing the right direction—mostly toward the three-walled shed near his house rather than mostly away—and he grabbed a fistful of its mane. Hiding himself as much as he could behind the horse, he slowly walked it to the shed, desperate for cover and desperate to hear what the Lin Kuei were saying.

He was only halfway to the shed when the two men abruptly left. Relieved at their departure—and failure to complete whatever mission they were on—and disappointed at his own failure to find out what that mission was, he finished walking the horse into the shed, then patted it on the hindquarters to make it go back out to the field.

"Honor?" he whispered.

It appeared in front of him. =Yes, Li Nei Jen?=

"Go out there—but don't make them see you—and find out where they are."

=They are leaving.=

Sub-Zero frowned. "You didn't go anywhere."

=We can feel their heat. It is diminishing.=

"Well, how far are they?"

Honor vanished.

Sub-Zero put his face in his hands and leaned against the wall of the shed. He counted the seconds idly.

It was almost three minutes later that Honor returned.

=Li Nei Jen!=

Sub-Zero jerked his hands off his face.

=They are almost two field-lengths away from here,= Honor declared.

Sub-Zero glared at the Vyrenchi, then dashed quietly to the back wall of his parents' house. Leaning a little to the side, he looked into the kitchen window. It was dark. The sun was up, and his mother wasn't in the kitchen. If he hadn't already known that something had gone terribly wrong in the village of Yanxubin, that would have been all the evidence he needed.

He darted past the window and gently tried the backdoor. It was locked. Sighing, he settled back against the wall between the door and the window.

=Yuen Ming is not here?= asked Honor, appearing in front of Sub-Zero, hovering a little disconcertingly off the ground.

Sub-Zero would have given a lot for the Vyrenchi to be capable of vocal speech. It would have given him justification to yell at Honor to be quiet so as not to attract any attention. As it was, he closed his eyes for a moment and breathed deeply.

His efforts to calm himself were interrupted and completely destroyed by a knocking that rang suddenly through the early morning near-silence. Sub-Zero dropped into a ready crouch.

=We feel person across building,= Honor said. =Heat.=

Sub-Zero crept along the side of the house, then glanced quickly around the corner. He saw no one and rounded the corner to continue creeping around the house until he reached the front. He edged as close as he could to the corner of the building without making himself visible to someone standing just around it, and leaned forward until he could barely see who was there.

It was a girl—a pretty young woman, who knocked again on the door, then twirled around, looking nervously behind her. Sub-Zero recognized her. It was a friend of his little brother's, Biao Ying Xi.

"Honor?" Sub-Zero whispered. "Is there anyone across the building from us now?"

=No heat at all,= Honor replied solemnly.

Sub-Zero pushed off the ground like a track runner and had grabbed Ying Xi and pulled her around to the other side of the house before she could even think to scream.

She did remember, though, just as he rounded the corner. And she remembered very loudly in his ear.

Screaming like she was dying, she scrabbled with her fingernails at his bare arms, which were locked around her waist. He grabbed both her arms tightly with one hand, pushed her away from him, and pressed her mouth firmly with his hand.

"Ying Xi!" he hissed. "It's me. You know me."

She quieted for a moment, staring at him with wide eyes, then began to scream even louder. He could hear her voice breaking even though the sound was muffled by his hand. He swung her under one arm, being sure to keep his hand over her mouth, and carried her away from the house.

When he reached the shed, Sub-Zero set Ying Xi down inside it, his hand still over her mouth. The sound coming from underneath his hand changed abruptly, lowering in pitch and gaining a cadence.

"What?" he whispered, hesitantly pulling his hand away from her mouth.

"I've stopped screaming now," Ying Xi answered calmly.

"Good," he answered curtly, clapping her on the shoulder. "Now be quiet so I can listen." He stepped up to the shed's back wall, which faced his parents' house's back wall, and pressed his ear against the wood. With his other ear, he heard light footsteps behind him.

"Have you seen them?" Biao Ying Xi whispered onto his neck. She added, almost inaudibly, "The Lin Kuei."

Sub-Zero turned the upper half of his body away from the wall. Ying Xi was standing just behind his right shoulder; Honor was standing just behind his left shoulder. Ying Xi didn't appear to notice that she wasn't the only one hovering behind him. He raised an eyebrow at Honor.

=We do not wish to frighten her further,= Honor explained.

Sub-Zero turned his ear back to the wood. "They were here, just before you."

She gasped. "They came to my house. I crawled out my window and came here for help. What if I had run into them on the road? I could have died." She gasped again. "What if they heard me? You saved me."

"Yes, I did," he said.

=Someone's coming.= Honor leaned forward to whisper in his ear, even though he spoke directly to his mind.

"What if they hear you now?" Sub-Zero asked quickly, turning back to Ying Xi and trying to make his backhand swing at Honor appear natural. His elbow went through Honor's head, and the hair on his arm stood up.

Ying Xi's eyes widened, and she put her hand over her mouth. As Sub-Zero turned back to the wall to listen, she backed up into the corner and crouched down.

"No one was here earlier, Mistress," said a man Sub-Zero did not recognize.

"You didn't break in," answered a female voice. "Did it not occur to you that they could have been hiding?"

A woman. He pressed harder on the board, determined to hear more, but instead heard hooves clomping through grass with his other ear, and spun around to see that a trio of his father's horses had come to see the strangers in the shed.

He looked down at Ying Xi. "Make sure they don't come in here," he mouthed, pointing viciously at the horses, then quickly pressing his ear back against the wall.

"You broke into three other houses in town," said the woman. "Why not this one?"

"The parents—" began the ninja.

"This had nothing to do with the parents," snapped the woman. "Or do you think the Lis are somehow special?"

"No, Mistress."

"Are you afraid to break into the Lis' house, or are you just unwilling to disrespect them?"

The wall of the shed shook with a sudden impact on the woman's last words. Sub-Zero jumped away from the wall. The female ninja was a bad sign. They were in more danger than he had thought. He turned to get Ying Xi's attention and saw that two of the horses had stuck their heads in the shed, and one of them was chewing on Ying Xi's dress while she tried to push its head away.

"I can't," she mouthed, shaking her head.

He crept along the shed's side wall until he reached the opening and leaned around the wall to check whether the Lin Kuei were paying any attention to the horses. He found himself staring straight into the masked face of the female ninja, who had turned from the other ninja and was leaning on the corner of the shed. Her eyes widened; he felt his do the same. He jumped back inside the shed, nearly threw Ying Xi onto one of the horses, then climbed up behind her, urging the horse forward, across the field as fast as it could go.

* * *

Tanya sat at her vanity, facing the mirror, and fretted. She didn't like worrying; it made the skin on her forehead wrinkle unattractively. It was like looking into the future to a time when her perfect skin finally failed her, and she shriveled up like a prune. Or like the witch doctor. She had nightmares about the witch doctor. It always started with her hands, with her fingernails, and the dreams frightened her so much that a glimpse of anyone's yellowed, brittle nails was enough to make her stomach feel funny.

It wasn't just her forehead wrinkle that was making her less attractive than usual. Her eyes were puffy from lack of sleep, and her hair was becoming stringy. She had been sitting there all night. All night, and Rain still hadn't come back. She hadn't heard any commotion, either, so if the entire realm had been overtaken by Earth warriors, they had done it awfully quietly.

She could only infer that Rain was alive and unhurt. But she could very easily imagine that he was lying somewhere in the palace, maybe along one of the balconies, with his guts ripped out by some crazy human. She was actually in the process of imagining it, crying sympathetically for her potential self, when the door opened behind her, and she saw Rain standing in the doorway reflected in her mirror.

She jumped up and ran to him. "We didn't lose!" she shrieked, throwing her arms around his neck.

"No, we did lose," Rain said.

Tanya pulled her face away from his chest to look him in the face. "What do you mean?"

"We lost Shang Tsung," Rain said, "and we lost Reptile and Jade. They're all dead. We lost Kitana. We even lost Mileena."

"I thought she was on their side," Tanya said. "Why did they kill her?"

"They didn't," Rain said. "They rescued her. Kitana's not dead either, but she was helping them and ran away from the palace. They're not dead, but they're gone."

"But we didn't lose the realm!" Tanya said, trying to cheer him up. "You drove them away."

"We lost, Tanya," he said. "They weren't here for the realm. They were here for Mileena, and they got what they came for." He pulled away from her embrace.

"But the plans are still on, aren't they? The plans to invade?"

"There will be setbacks, but it won't be cancelled," Rain said seriously. "If anything, it's more important now, so we all have to step forward and take more than our share of the work."

Tanya frowned. "What do you mean?"

"If you noticed," he explained, "we lost all three of our female assassins, for one reason or another. That means you may have to step up and take their place. I want you to be ready."

"I have to fight?"

"You might," he said earnestly.

She lowered her head. "I might die."

"Oh, chin up, now," he said quietly, moving closer to her again. "We would never ask you to do something beyond your capabilities. You weren't made for war, but without great effort nothing great can ever be accomplished. And conquering Earth will be the greatest event of our lives."

She smiled despite herself. "As long as it's not Mortal Kombat," she conceded.

"I promise."

* * *

"Where have you been?" Vendetta shouted.

Enmity closed her eyes—bent over as she was, he couldn't see her eyes. "You sent me away, sir."

"Then why are you back?" he snapped.

Her eyes opened in shock, and she almost sat up. "News?" she meekly asked the floor.

"What sort of news?"

"Impossible news?"

Vendetta made a sound that was alarmingly like a growl.

"Master," she said hurriedly, "while I was checking on the status of the operation at the Li house—" She paused to hope that he wouldn't realize he hadn't sent her there. "—I saw someone hiding on the property that none of us expected to see. Unfortunately, he escaped us—"

"Unfortunate," Vendetta interrupted with a threat in his tone. "Who was it?"

"Sub-Zero, sir."

"That is hardly unexpected," he answered slowly, hitting every consonant.

"The real Sub-Zero, sir."

There was a moment of silence, and Enmity's breath stuck in her throat.

"Kill him," Vendetta said lightly. He walked away, heading back to his desk, offhandedly adding, "And don't bother me again."


	14. Chapter Thirteen

**Transposition**  
by Nyohah

**Chapter Thirteen**

* * *

Smoke kept his eyes closed. He knew exactly where he was. He was sitting against the back wall of a cell on the lowest level of Lin Kuei headquarters in Yanxubin, China. His particular cell was almost directly underneath the pawn shop on the main road of town. He knew more than that, though. Had anyone ever asked him, he would have said without hesitation or the slightest sense of arrogance that he probably knew the Lin Kuei headquarters better than anyone else. It had once been a ship—the queen's private ship. The only other ninja who had known the ship as well as Smoke had was Vendetta himself, and he spent so much of his time in his own quarters that Smoke doubted he knew many details about the day-to-day use of the more open areas of headquarters. None of the younger generation of ninjas even knew anything about the headquarters' history as a ship, and most of them didn't have access to as much of the modern headquarters as Smoke did. His little cell had once been used solely to store rice and spices. It still had a noticeable, distinct smell. The room Vendetta had claimed as his own had once been the queen's quarters. The Lin Kuei ceremonial room had once been the bridge. He knew all of the uses and relative dimensions of the rooms without thinking. Looking around gained him nothing.

Besides, it was usually too dark to see. Currently, it was too bright to see, because the door was open. If Smoke had opened his eyes, he might have seen three silhouettes in the doorway. Two of them were guards. One of them was talking to him.

"Did you hear me?" Vendetta demanded. "I said I had news for you."

Smoke didn't answer. A few seconds later, he heard a rustling. It was a very familiar rustling to him—the sound of Vendetta pulling his arm back in preparation to administering a blow. Smoke took the second he knew he had to consider his situation and decide he would rather not be both a prisoner and in pain.

"Oh, I don't know," he said slowly, intentionally feebly, just in time to stay Vendetta's backhand. "Sitting in the dark in here, I lose track of the time, the place, and everything else. I probably don't know enough of what is going on that your news will make sense to me anymore."

"You've been down here less than a day," Vendetta answered.

"No," Smoke said, faking disbelief. (It was about an hour and a half before noon.)

"Yes," Vendetta said. "You have far more than enough comprehension to benefit from my news. I must say I am less than surprised that you are cracking up already, Hua Sa."

Hua Sa. Vendetta had given him the old suffix of the slaves. Smoke had been a slave in all but name when Vendetta had trained him as a ninja, but he had never been formally given a slave's title. And now Vendetta had given him the title wrong. It should have been Quy Sa, or perhaps Ling Sa. If they were called by their family names, then his wife would've been Kei Sa, daughter of Kei Sa, son of Kei Sa, and that was a ridiculous naming scheme. Smoke stifled a laugh, masking it with a fretful groan as he began to speak again.

"Oh, well, if that's the case, I guess I'll have your news, then."

"My daughter—" said Vendetta, taking a step closer, "—you know my daughter, don't you?"

Smoke nodded exaggeratedly. He knew the point of her right boot more than anything.

"She was just at the Lis' earlier this morning."

Smoke heard another, less familiar rustle, and the brightness of the light on his eyelids increased. Vendetta had knelt beside him.

"Now you would tell me that there were no Lis there this morning, wouldn't you?" Vendetta asked, discomfortingly close.

Smoke shook his head.

"And you would not be intentionally lying to me. All holed up at Yen Sa's, aren't they?" Vendetta slapped the floor. "But there was in fact a Li at the Lis. Now," Vendetta said slowly, "can you guess who that Li was?"

Smoke swallowed hard.

"He was a pupil of yours—and a family friend," Vendetta said lightly. "We all thought him dead."

"Sub-Zero?" asked Smoke, having to fake the dim-wittedness in his voice but not the shock.

"Yes," Vendetta snarled suddenly, "and I suppose a _loyalist_ like you would like to crown him _prince_!"

"He was your best," Smoke said. "Wouldn't you be glad to see him?"

"I'd be glad to see him dead, with the other three lined up in a row beside him." Vendetta stood up, blocking most of the light from the door, and took a step backward. "Open your eyes," he hissed.

Smoke did as he was asked. Vendetta had turned a remarkable shade of red—nearing purple, really.

"Do you understand yet?" Vendetta asked.

"I've thought for long, arduous hours and reasoned that you probably aren't striving for the good of mankind, given that you kidnapped me," Smoke said, dropping the act. "And this is only tangentially about the Lis."

"Oh, really? How so?"

"I won't argue that you haven't taken pains to incorporate harming the Lis into whatever it is you've been planning," Smoke said. "Reviving the Lin Kuei was a blow to everything Ming and her brother worked for. Forcing their eldest son into your service was another." Smoke ticked off both points on his fingers, then sighed. "Shall I continue with this tiresome account of your actions?"

"Please do."

"Very well," Smoke said. "Getting their oldest son killed must have seemed a masterstroke. How inconvenient that he appears to be alive after all."

"Yes," Vendetta snapped. "Hurry up."

"I am just being thorough. After their eldest son appeared to be dead, you made claims on their other son, even though at the time he was recovering from a nearly deadly sickness. That was possibly your harshest blow yet. Though nothing next to what would have happened if he had followed in his brother's footsteps and died in Mortal Kombat. Seeing him return must have been frustrating."

"Well," Vendetta said, "I attribute that to your tutelary gift."

"Then you misattribute it," Smoke answered. "But now, you've set yourself as ruler in Ming's stead and general in place of Wei Yong? The capstone of twenty-five years of insult to the Lis in the name of the common good. I really had to explain that to you?"

Vendetta laughed once. "You just argued the opposite of your position, Hua Sa. It would seem the Lis are central to my plan, not tangential. "

"It would," Smoke said, "And yet, you know where they are, and you're here talking to me."

Vendetta snorted. "You're the fastest way to the Lis in this town—no, don't protest. Yen Sa is too well-connected in the business world not to be cared about if he suddenly disappeared. But you're right. It's not about the Lis, or perhaps I should say, it's not solely about the Lis. I'm fighting a much larger battle."

"I think it would be considered a war," Smoke said.

Vendetta kicked the side of his head. Smoke's head turned as he fell, and his face hit the ground hard enough to start his nose bleeding.

"Very well, then," Vendetta spat, then calmed suddenly. "A war. An eternal _war_. I gave them Mandalore, and now I'm going to give them Earth."

Smoke's teeth clenched, and he inhaled involuntarily, snorting up blood. "I had no idea it went back that far," he forced through his teeth.

"I chose my side before you were even born," Vendetta said, "following our great Emperor Yuen. Whom you, as I recall, let be killed!" He kicked Smoke again, this time in the stomach.

Smoke wheezed. "This is revenge?" he managed. "You're still angry that you didn't get me executed?"

"No, no, dear Hua Sa," Vendetta said. "You will pay your debt, but with service, not with death."

Smoke wiped blood off his face. "You think a 'loyalist' is going to turn traitor with you?"

Vendetta laughed. He turned around, clapping his hands together. "My daughter can kidnap an old ninja; she can kidnap anyone. Scientists, from Yen Sa's business. Specialists in robots and neurobiology in the cargo bay, setting up a premier laboratory for researching the possibilities of uniting the two. We're going to explore the augmentation and control of the central nervous system with robotics and see if it can't just solve the eternal problem of discipline on the battlefield."

Smoke stared at him. Prolonged contact with Yuan had apparently rubbed off on him more than he thought, because he understood at once what Vendetta was saying. "You're making robots out of people?" His voice came out in a disbelieving monotone.

Vendetta smiled under his mask, the skin around his eyes wrinkling. "We're starting tonight."

* * *

"Do you think we lost them?" Biao Ying Xi asked as Sub-Zero pulled the horse to a stop on a dirt road west of Yanxubin.

Sub-Zero turned the horse around, inspecting the field behind him. "I'm not sure they made much of an effort to follow us," he said, sliding off the horse. "They certainly didn't try to follow us on horseback."

Honor shook its head.

"She must have gone back for orders," Sub-Zero muttered, turning slowly to take in his surroundings. "Back where I started."

"Oh?" Ying Xi asked, still perched on the horse. "You came from the west? Where have you been?"

Sub-Zero looked at her for a moment. "A long way from here," he said. "But, yes, I came from the west this morning."

"Well, it's good for us, now, to be back here," Ying Xi continued.

Sub-Zero raised his eyebrows at her.

"We can go around town instead of through it," she said.

He stared at her.

"To get to Mr. Yen's. To find your family." She paused. "You were looking for them this morning, right?"

"Oh, of course," Sub-Zero answered quickly. "They're at Mr. Yen's?"

"Where else would they be? Oh," she added, digging in her pocket. "I work there. If they've noticed what's going on and locked it up, I have a key." She held up what looked more like a piece of plastic.

"Right."

=Is it Yen Sa she talks of?= Honor asked.

"Yes," Sub-Zero said. "Off to Mr. Yen's, then?" He stepped up to the horse's shoulder and gently guided it forward.

"Nei Jen?" Ying Xi asked.

"What?"

"You're kind of more talkative than you used to be."

Sub-Zero sighed, and kept walking.

* * *

Kitana raised her hands above her head in surrender, watching the nomad captain warily. "I won't just quietly let you kill me," she said. "I am well-trained in fighting—"

The captain snapped his fingers, and Kitana felt someone grab and squeeze the back of her neck. The nomad behind her pushed on her neck until Kitana hunched over.

"We're not going to do it here," the captain said scornfully. Kitana watched through the hair falling into her face as the captain turned and broke the semicircle, Plus-Sign still at his side. The rest of the nomads followed him in a loose clump, and Kitana walked in the middle of the group, humiliated.

The wound on her stomach burned when they finally stopped in front of a line of tents outside of town. The nomad soldiers formed a semicircle alongside the tents, and Kitana was pushed to the center of it. The nomad holding onto her neck released her with a short push, and Kitana straightened herself to see the captain standing a body-length in front of her. Plus-Sign had disappeared.

"Welcome to camp," said the captain, giving her a short bow. The nomads behind Kitana laughed.

Plus-Sign emerged suddenly from a big tent to Kitana's left. He was holding a flat, square board with a sheaf of paper attached to it by a ring. He took his place beside and just behind the captain, flipping through sheets of paper until the one on top of his board was blank. Kitana squinted at the paper hanging off the back of the board and was startled to see tiny, neat Edenian writing next to what looked like endless columns of numbers. Plus-Sign noticed she was looking and raised his pen with an almost belligerent cock of his shoulders.

"Who wants to go first?" asked the captain.

"Definitely me," one of the nomads on Kitana's right growled.

"You went last time," Plus-Sign said.

"No, I didn't."

Plus-Sign flipped back a page on his board. "No, you definitely did."

"You trust those scribbles more than me?" asked the soldier.

Plus-Sign slammed the blank sheet back on top. "They're my scribbles," he replied with the hint of a threat in his voice.

"But it was unarmed," the soldier said.

"Doesn't matter," the captain snapped. "You want to be ordered like Kahn orders, go to the palace. You want a turn you have to give everyone else a turn." He paused a moment, cocking his head at Kitana. "I'll do it."

Plus-Sign made a note.

"Do what exactly?" Kitana asked, forcing herself not to back up.

The captain held up his arms, and the metal blades embedded in them slid out.

"What sort of weapon would you like, Miss Fighting Expert?" asked Plus-Sign. "And how would you like to be known in the records?"

Kitana stood up straight, flexing her arms. A fight she could handle; injured or not, she was still a Mortal Kombat survivor. "You can call me Kitana," she said. She reached into her robes with her right arm and pulled out her fans, tossing one into her left hand and flicking them open in one smooth motion.

Plus-Sign stopped writing abruptly. The captain froze.

One of the nomads to Kitana's left shouted, "Hey, this is the best prize we've ever had!"

"Don't be stupid," snapped the captain.

"Isn't she supposed to be wearing blue?" asked Plus-Sign. "And a mask?"

"I traded my clothes last night," Kitana said.

The captain laughed. "Why would you trade your pretty clothes for that thing?"

"I traded my clothes for bandages," she replied, carefully pulling her robe open just at her stomach. She was pleased to see that her bandages had an impressive red stain. "And I would have preferred not to be recognized."

The captain suddenly took a step forward and jerked his arm toward Kitana's neck. Kitana dropped her robe and tried to swing her fans up fast enough to block the blow. She knew as soon as she began that she wouldn't make it in time. She closed her eyes.

The metal against her skin was surprisingly cool and surprisingly gentle.

Kitana opened her eyes.

"What sort of a mission are you on?" the captain demanded, holding his arm-blade to her throat.

"I'm not on a mission," Kitana said. "I'm running away from the palace."

"And we're expected to believe that?"

"I am the princess of Edenia," Kitana said. "Shao Kahn murdered my parents and lied to me for years. I found out. I helped the Earth warriors invade the palace yesterday. They know. So I ran."

"The Earth warriors invaded the palace?" Plus-Sign asked.

"Only to rescue a prisoner," Kitana said. "At which they succeeded, with my help."

"Interesting story," said the captain.

"How do you think I got injured?" Kitana said.

"If she was injured in the palace," Plus-Sign said quietly, "she would stay there for treatment. If she was injured out here, she would go back, not further out."

"Close those fans," the captain said.

Kitana flicked them shut.

"Now hand them to Djurash, pointy end last, if you will."

Plus-Sign put his board under his arm and stepped forward to take the fans from Kitana.

The captain removed his blade from Kitana's neck. "Into the tent with Djurash." He pointed his arm blade to the big tent in the middle.

Plus-Sign politely lifted the flap of the tent, and Kitana stepped into it.

* * *

It seemed a much longer walk around Yanxubin than through it. Sub-Zero was fairly certain it actually was a longer walk, but he had never been very knowledgeable about geometry. His brother could have written him a formula. It also seemed a longer walk than it was, as both Ying Xi and Honor kept making irrelevant comments. He had come to expect it from Honor, but he remembered Ying Xi as a quiet girl. Maybe she was still panicked.

It was just past noon, and he thought they were almost halfway to Yen Sa's house, making terrible time. He probably would have been there already if he were by himself, but the horse was tired, and Ying Xi didn't really know how to ride, so they kept taking breaks. It was their third break, and Sub-Zero was ready to tell Ying Xi that if it hurt so much to ride a horse, they would make better time if she walked.

She was picking flowers in the brush by the side of the road. He decided she wasn't still panicking, but she might have entirely cracked.

=Li Nei Jen!= Honor attempted a whisper. It felt like the inside of Sub-Zero's skull was being scraped.

He jumped. "What?"

"I didn't say anything," Ying Xi said, standing up and shielding her face from the sun with the hand that wasn't full of flowers.

"Oh," Sub-Zero said. "It's, uh, so quiet I must be hearing things." He waited until she turned her attention back to the bushes, then cocked his head and glared at Honor.

=Someone comes.=

Sub-Zero whirled. They were well outside of town—a mile or two too far for anyone to be out here on their everyday business.

"Are they close?" he demanded.

=Yes,= said Honor.

He turned back to Ying Xi. She was looking at him as though he were the one who had decided to start picking flowers. "It wasn't you I heard," he explained. "Get back on the horse."

She hurried over to the grazing horse, flowers in hand, and began to ineffectually try to pull herself up.

He rushed over to her. "Drop the flowers!" He hit them out of her hand, then grabbed her by the waist and pushed her up. His urgency spooked the horse, which reared before taking off down the road, trampling Ying Xi's flowers as it went. Sub-Zero caught Ying Xi as she tumbled backward off the horse.

She squealed helplessly, staring at the horse, as he walked back across the road to the brush. Holding her by the waist, he lifted her as he had to push her onto the horse and tossed her over the bushes. She stumbled and fell to her hands and knees in the grass on the other side as he leapt over the bushes.

"Come on, and be quiet," he ordered, pushing her underneath the brush. He wiggled his way in beside her and waited, staring at the road in front of him.

Three minutes later, a pair of female boots stepped into his field of view. He struggled not to make a sound as he breathed in sharply. In a moment, his tension turned to confusion. The boots were brown, not black, and round-toed instead of two-toed like Lin Kuei boots. He arched his neck uncomfortably to look upward. The woman's legs were tightly clothed in dark brown leather and went on for far too long. He finally found her waist and saw a ribbon of exposed copper skin before more brown leather girding her torso. He inched forward so he could find her head—she was taller than he was—and jolted in surprise when he saw she was wearing a full-size pair of antlers.

She jerked her head toward him and looked down. He had rustled the bushes. He watched her take another step forward, then lean down and drag Ying Xi out of the bushes in one smooth motion.

Ying Xi shrieked, and the antlered woman grabbed her around the neck.

Sub-Zero burst out from under the bushes and tackled the antlered woman. She hit the ground on her side and bucked, trying to put him underneath her. He grabbed her bicep with one hand and one of the antlers on her head with the other, struggling to force her onto her back. To his surprise, she slipped her head out of the antlers—he saw too late they were tied at the base of her skull instead of under her chin—and he began to fall forward. Before he hit the ground he was tackled from the side.

He landed hard on his back, but his new assailant was much smaller than the first, and he tossed her off of him almost as easily as he tossed Ying Xi. He caught a glimpse of a woman with similar coloring and attire as the first as she kicked her legs, trying, but failing, to keep from landing on her back. He threw his arms back in preparation to leap to his feet, but the sudden, unwelcome sensation of something pointy under his chin made him freeze.

The tall woman was standing over him, holding her antlers in her hand, the tip of one of them pressed against his throat with the perfect amount of force to communicate that she could punch it all the way through his trachea if he gave her reason to.

The other woman stood up, brushing dirt off her arms. She spoke to the taller woman in a language Sub-Zero couldn't identify.

The taller woman pulled the antlers away from Sub-Zero's throat, taking a step back and settling them back on her head. Sub-Zero slowly climbed to his feet, taking care not to startle the two women. He looked down the road and saw that the two women were not alone. A third woman stood docilely in the middle of the road, large, dark sunglasses on her face and a scarf falling out of her white hair. The shorter woman turned suddenly and began to walk toward the white-haired woman.

The taller woman spoke sternly in fair English. "You understand me?"

Sub-Zero nodded.

"Why were you hiding to ambush us?" she demanded.

"It was a misunderstanding," he said slowly in his best English. "We were hiding from someone else."

"You look like one of them," the tall woman said, jabbing her finger back in the direction of Yanxubin.

Sub-Zero looked down at his ninja uniform. "I used to be, but not now," he said. "It's difficult to explain."

"Convenient."

"Look, I'm not wearing my mask anymore." He pointed to his mouth.

"It's true," said the shorter woman, pulling the white-haired woman by the arm. "All the others were masked."

Up close, the white-haired woman looked vaguely familiar to Sub-Zero. He couldn't stop staring at her.

"He's protecting me," Ying Xi said.

"And you're protecting her?" Sub-Zero asked, pointing to the white-haired woman.

She jerked in surprise, and the sunglasses slid down her nose and onto the road. The shorter woman ducked quickly to retrieve the sunglasses and slid them back onto the white-haired woman's face. But she wasn't fast enough. Sub-Zero saw the woman's eyes, and they were as white as her hair. Ying Xi gasped and took a step backward; she had seen them, too.

Sub-Zero gripped her by the elbow. The white-haired woman's eyes were not the reason he still stared. He did know her.

"We're trying to find my family," he said after a moment. "I think where they are, they're safe, at the house of a man named Yen Sa."

The white-haired woman did not react to the name.

"Mr. Yen's the most powerful man in town," Ying Xi said.

"He's one of the most powerful men in town," Sub-Zero amended, "and he's the only one who might be able to protect you from what the other one is doing with his ninjas."

"Mistral," said the shorter woman, "I think it's our best choice."

"Trust me," said Sub-Zero, watching the white-haired woman. "The people you want to see are there."

* * *

Yuan stood in Mr. Yen's kitchen doorway, staring at the trees behind the house, his head cocked. Something was off about one of the trees in the middle. He had thought it was the glass of the kitchen window playing tricks with his vision, but the problem was still there without the glass. It might be the sun at some weird angle casting that odd-shaped shadow beside—

"Yuan!"

He jumped. His father gave him a stern look. "You said you would only have the door open for a minute."

"Yes."

"It's been five." Li Wei Yong stood up. He pulled Yuan backward out of the doorway by the collar and shut the door, locking the deadbolt. "We have almost no defenses, but we have some, so don't just throw them away."

"Sorry," Yuan mumbled. He walked across the kitchen to hover in the doorway leading to the hallway instead. A few seconds later, he heard the stomping of heels on hardwood floors.

Chat rounded the corner and sprinted to Yuan. "There's someone coming!" she panted.

Yuan stood up straight. He heard a chair fall over in the kitchen behind them.

"How many?" asked Wei Yong, squeezing through the doorway.

"Five of them," Chat said, "and they look pretty tough. Come on!"

The three of them ran to the entryway. It was mostly dark, only a warm glow and some slivers of light penetrating the blankets they had hung behind all the glass. Yuan slipped under a blanket near the door and looked out at the five people who were approaching. He blinked in surprise, then ducked out from behind the blanket and opened the door, just to be sure.

"Yuan!" his father hissed.

Yuan laughed. "No, they're friends." He reached out an arm and beckoned the five warriors forward. They broke into a run and soon reached the door, filing into Mr. Yen's entryway and forming a loose semicircle.

"Well, we're here!" Kung Lao announced, spreading his arms. "And we're ready for Mortal Kombat!"

Chat nodded appreciatively. "What's that?"


	15. Chapter Fourteen

**Transposition**  
by Nyohah

**Chapter Fourteen**

* * *

Mr. Yen's kitchen was packed. Fourteen people crowded into the usually plentiful space, some sitting at the table, others on counters, the rest standing in between. The only person with adequate personal space was not actually a person at all—and Yuan thought Raiden might have done some sort of divinely powered spatial stretch on the area around him to get what space he had.

The nine of them who had been there since before the excursion to Outworld were looking a little worn. Ching stood beside Yuan, almost leaning on him but not quite touching him and sighing so quietly he could barely hear it. The rest of them looked bored with the explanation of things they already knew. Yuan had tried to keep it short, but his father had taken to droning about things that had happened before Yuan was born. Chat had decided playing with her boot laces was more productive than listening and had propped her foot against the corner of the table to do so. Mulan was the only one who didn't look bored, but she wasn't paying attention to Wei Yong either. Yuan stifled as a smile as he noticed she was staring at Kung Lao with her chin in her hand.

The new arrivals looked confused and a little angry. Liu Kang, in particular, was glaring at Yuan as though trying to burn a hole through his skull. Sonya Blade was rubbing the bridge of her nose. Jax had his fists on his cheeks, resting his head on his arms, which were covered by contiguous sections of metal-plated bionic implants. Yuan had already decided to corner Jax and get as many details about them as he could.

"So there's no Mortal Kombat," Kung Lao said.

Yuan shook his head.

"And there's not going to be a Mortal Kombat."

Yuan shook his head again.

"But we were supposed to go to Outworld with you, to rescue Mileena."

Yuan nodded.

"But you left without us."

"I got impatient," Yuan said.

Kung Lao nodded slowly. "And these are your parents?"

Yuan blinked. "Uh, yeah."

Kung Lao bowed. "Nice to meet you."

Ming and Wei Yong glanced at each other, then inclined their heads at Kung Lao politely.

"Mom killed Shang Tsung," Yuan said.

Kung Lao stood abruptly and tipped back his hat. "You are the best mom ever," he said seriously.

Ming gave him a small smile and put her hand on her forehead.

"This is all very insulting," Liu Kang said.

"Don't be jealous," Kung Lao replied.

"Liu Kang is right," said Raiden, clenching his fists and tilting his head down so his hat obscured his face. "You sent me an urgent message, Li Yuan Syei Nah—"

Yuan flinched at his full name, but recovered quickly when he noticed that Kung Lao was imitating Raiden's posture, his own razor-brimmed hat tipped low. Mulan giggled.

"—and then you disregarded my aid entirely while I gathered the warriors you requested I bring," Raiden finished, oblivious.

"I guess you should have teleported them," Ching said demurely.

"I do not teleport others," Raiden declared.

"I can," Ching scoffed. "Well, not overseas, but aren't you a god?"

"I am a protector," Raiden said. "My power is intended to endow me with the strength to protect the realm, not to aid its people directly."

"Yeah, but teleporting your champions around—"

Yuan grabbed Ching's arm. She quieted and raised her other arm in a conciliatory gesture.

"All right, so it's not Mortal Kombat," Jax said, letting his arms fall to the table with a _thunk_, "and you already finished the mission you wanted help with. Does that mean we have to leave right away? 'Cause Sonya and I just came from Fort Myer in Arlington, and I better not have to go all the way back."

"We did lose one of our own last night to the Lin Kuei," Yuan said.

"Oh, sorry," Jax said. "You looking for revenge?"

"No," Yuan said. "Lost as in lost. He was captured. We'll have to go rescue him, but we're kind of a small army to take on the whole Lin Kuei. We would definitely appreciate help."

"Did it have something to do with all the ninja patrols we saw out there?" asked Kung Lao.

"What?" the five residents of Yanxubin asked, more or less together.

"Do you have ninja patrols often?" asked Tung.

"No," Mr. Yen said.

"I would estimate our frequency of ninja patrols is on the order of never," Yuan said.

"Vendetta," Wei Yong said.

"So this is revenge?" asked Jax.

"Oh, no," Yuan said. "Vendetta is the Lin Kuei grandmaster's code name. Apparently he's the one who betrayed my parents during the war my dad told you about, and nobody figured it out until yesterday, when he had Smoke captured."

"I think we would definitely appreciate your help," Wei Yong said.

"This Lin Kuei thing sounds like bad news," Kung Lao said. "I think we'd all rather help than go." He looked around to the others. They nodded their approval.

"It's the Yanxubin Liberation Front," Mulan said, smiling distractedly, her eyes still on Kung Lao.

"I don't know about liberation," Mr. Yen said, standing up, "but I think we should probably actually guard my house."

* * *

The nomad tent was spacious but mostly empty. A rug sat in the middle of the brushed-sand floor. The only things along the back wall were two stacks of boards and paper—one used, one blank. A hand-drawn map covered the wall to Kitana's left; a desk with an ink well and more stacks of paper was to Kitana's right. The light in the tent abruptly dimmed as Kitana heard the tent flap close.

"Sit down," Djurash said, stepping around her and pointing to the rug. "Don't touch anything." He walked around the desk and pulled the chair out, sitting himself in it and his board on the desk.

Kitana did as she was told, settling back on her heels. The rug was cool, like the sand beneath it, kept out of the sun's heat.

Djurash twisted the end off his pen, and Kitana watched curiously as he carefully poured ink into it and replaced the end.

"That's an interesting pen," Kitana said. "The scribes in the palace still use quills and dip their pens."

"I'm not a scribe," Djurash said. "And we can't afford to waste ink by blotting it all over the place."

"You do keep a lot of records," Kitana said.

"We're running an army," he answered, a hint of exasperation in his tone.

"Of course," she said quickly. "So you invented a pen that doesn't need to be dipped."

"Not me personally." Djurash lowered his head and began writing.

"Oh, of course not," Kitana said. "I didn't mean—"

Djurash raised his pen off the paper and looked up at her.

"—not that I'm suggesting you personally aren't intelligent enough to invent something like that," Kitana amended. "I couldn't help but notice you keep so many columns of numbers."

"We're running an army," he said again, then lowered his head and resumed writing.

Kitana watched him in silence for a moment, waiting to see how engrossed he was in his paper. When he didn't glance up, she pushed her right knee out a little towards the door then slowly shifted her weight onto it.

"I can see you," Djurash said, his head still bent. "My eyes do move independently of my head."

Kitana flushed and moved back to her original position. "So," she said quickly, folding her hands in her lap, "if you're not a scribe, what are you?"

"I'm the quartermaster." He pulled a board off the corner of the desk and ran his finger along it, then turned back to his original paper to continue writing.

"And you use the plus sign because you keep so many columns of numbers."

He looked up at her. "Partially. But also, the plus sign divides the universe into quarters, see?" He traced the plus sign on his collar with the end of his pen, and laughed, then bent back over the paper.

Kitana blinked. After a moment of silence, she traced a plus sign in mid-air. "But that only works if you get it exactly in the middle," she said.

"The universe is _infinite_," Djurash said, as though that explained something.

"Ah," Kitana said. She rubbed the rough fabric of her robe between her fingers for a while. "You're not too fond of Shao Kahn as a whole, are you?" she asked, finally.

"Noticed, have you?" Djurash answered, and Kitana was pretty sure she heard sarcasm in his tone.

"Yes, I did," she said. "And I couldn't help but think that it puts us on the same side."

Djurash looked up. "Shouldn't you have someone else to ask these questions for you, so your princessly reputation doesn't get dirty?" He waved his pen around, then added, "Besides, you're terrible at subtlety."

"She's dead," Kitana said flatly.

Djurash studied her for a moment. "She already did her job, then?"

"What do mean?"

"Took the fall for you," he said. "The short one with a sudden stop, up on a tower somewhere the birds can get at you. Or are you fonder of beheadings as a method of execution in the palace?"

"She wasn't executed," Kitana said. "She was killed."

"Because of this rebellion of yours?"

Kitana nodded.

"Same thing." Djurash began writing again. "Who killed her?"

"Rain."

He stopped. "Know him."

"Does he know about your position?" Kitana asked.

"Trying to blackmail me?" Djurash asked.

Kitana shook her head emphatically.

"Yes, he knows. Of course he knows," Djurash said with a laugh. "Think we could keep secret the fact that we suddenly became organized again after driving off so many of the palace's quartermasters?"

"And he didn't feel threatened by your increase of autonomy?"

"Well, we just explained that it was because we were sick of starving due to mishandled resources." Djurash tapped his pen against his dagger-like teeth. "It was mostly the truth, anyway."

"It still seems like something Shao Kahn would never allow," Kitana said.

"I don't think Kahn knows," he said.

"I'm sure Rain would report it to him."

"Really. I think you haven't been paying enough attention."

Kitana bristled. "I've known Rain since we were children."

"I've worked with him," Djurash said. "Have you?"

"Fine," she said curtly. "Why would Rain withhold information from his emperor?"

Djurash cocked his head at her and leaned back in his chair. "You've honestly never gotten the feeling that Rain's out for the cause of someone else?"

"Not until yesterday." Her voice trailed off, and she suppressed a shudder. "There was this witch. I think he worships her."

Djurash flung his pen onto the desk. "That's it!" His face darkened, and Kitana remembered suddenly why she'd had so many nightmares about the nomads as a child.

"You know her?" she asked.

"She used us a long time ago," Djurash said, "to fight dragons." He paused, and stared Kitana straight in the eyes. "We don't like people who use us."

Kitana swallowed. "I'll keep that in mind."

* * *

They were making worse time than before. Sub-Zero found himself longing for the earlier part of the journey, when Biao Ying Xi's rear had become sore, and she'd made him stop so she could pick flowers. He longed especially for the horse. The white-haired woman was not quick on her feet. And his father would be angry about losing the horse.

The shorter foreign woman—Lundiy—led the white-haired woman gently by the hand. The white-haired woman took baby steps with her head tilted slightly up, looking at the sky and not where she was going, if she was really looking at anything at all. With her dark, mirrored sunglasses, she looked like a blind woman.

Except that any blind person would have made better time. Ying Xi had time to pick flowers _while they walked_. Sub-Zero had begun kicking his feet out with every step, letting them swing back until his heel hit the ground, digging a little hole in the dirt, then slowly transferring his weight to his toes and starting all over again with the other foot. He looked a fool, but it was better than walking in circles around the group.

The taller woman—Mistral—was still walking circles, scouting ahead and behind and every direction in between, looking for approaching danger. Sub-Zero was watching, too, and listening, and _feeling_. He recognized that Mistral didn't know the land like he did, and thus it was natural for her protection efforts to require more effort, but he still felt she was wasting a lot of energy.

Besides, Sub-Zero was almost ninety percent certain that Honor would warn him of anyone approaching.

He was pleased to know that his confidence was warranted. He was displeased that the situation arose wherein it could be tested. He was especially displeased that the warning didn't do him any good.

They were walking down the road through a grove of trees when she ambushed them. He noticed her a full second before Honor's warning, which came less than a second before she leaped out from behind a tree and tackled him. He hit the ground hard.

Enmity hit the ground unsteadily, rolling a bit to the left and off of Sub-Zero. Sub-Zero rolled backward and landed in a crouch. Enmity jumped to her feet, and Sub-Zero yelled, "Honor!" as he leapt toward her.

She dodged his punch deftly and retaliated, scoffing. "Is that your new battle call, Sub-Zero?"

=We are sorry,= Honor said frantically. =She is not right temperature.=

"It doesn't suit you," Enmity said, jabbing toward his throat.

He blocked and kicked toward her knee. She picked up her leg and swung it forward, avoiding his kick. He lunged toward her while her foot was off the ground, but she was too adroit to be knocked off balance, crossing her raised leg over her other to catch herself and taking hold of his tunic with both hands to try to pull him over her shoulder as she twisted and bent. She didn't succeed, but he was wrenched around her anyway, ending up in a half crouch facing her.

She kept hold of his tunic. He saw Mistral approaching over Enmity's left shoulder, Ying Xi holding her arm with both hands, trying to hold her back but instead being pulled along. The last thing he needed was someone who didn't know what she was getting into trying to take on the most notorious Lin Kuei ninja and getting herself killed.

"No, stay back!" he shouted, then head-butted Enmity. She hissed but didn't let go. He straightened one of his legs, pushing it out along the ground between her feet, then kicking it up, trying to catch her in the crotch. She pushed her knees together, blocking it, and he did the only other thing he could think of. He fell over.

She fell hard on top of him, again, but this time she didn't roll off. He wedged the fingers of his right hand under the bottom side of her mask and began to jerk her head around. She struggled for a moment, futilely, then finally let go of his tunic to grab his arm, fingers clawing his skin, to wrench his hand out of her mask.

He jerked his arm away as hard as he could—her fingernails leaving curving welts down his forearm—and rolled to the side away from her. He pushed himself to his feet and turned to face her. She made no attempt to move into range, instead holding her arms out level with the ground and twisting her palms upward with a flick of her wrists.

Flames sprouted at his feet. He tripped over backward in his haste to escape and scrabbled away like an upside-down crab.

Sub-Zero did not like fire. He did a sort of reverse stumble to get himself to his feet and dashed into the grove of trees on the side of the road. Ying Xi shrieked as she saw him running away, but Sub-Zero knew Enmity would follow him. He was not abandoning them. He just had to get Enmity somewhere she would be hesitant to throw waves of fire at him.

Forest fires were horrific things. Forest frosts hardly hurt a thing. He only hoped she would care.

She seemed to. No more fire chased after him as he stomped through the trees, trying to find a good place to fight. He heard her right behind him, a quieter echo of the noise he was making pushing through the underbrush. She was gaining on him.

He found a large tree and stepped behind it. The sound of her movement stopped. He waited. She could move slowly, but she would come. He was waiting for her when she finally came into view and immediately aimed an ice blast at her.

Enmity dodged the ice blast with a forward leap that negated the backward step Sub-Zero took to try to get the tree back between them. She raised her arms and shot a ball of fire at him. He dodged frantically, and the fireball hit a tree behind him. The strangled moan he had heard while he dodged suddenly registered, and he saw that she was clutching her right forearm with a grimace. For a split second he waffled back and forth between putting out the fire and freezing Enmity before finally declaring himself an idiot and aiming an ice blast at Enmity. She froze into a pained statue. Sub-Zero quickly put out the fire behind him, then walked over to her, counting down the seconds until the enchantment wore off. He wrapped his arm around the space around her neck and placed his other hand right behind the base of her skull, careful not to actually touch her. In the moment she unfroze, he pulled his arm back, trapping her head against his hand, which was trapped against his chest.

"Don't struggle," he warned her, "or I'll just tear your spine out. You know I can."

She grunted.

"What are you doing?" he demanded.

"What I do," she choked.

"What have I done to deserve it? I'm no traitor."

"You abandoned the clan."

"Oh, I'm sorry," he said. "I was in a hell dimension." He heard a hurt sort of mew in his head—he had spent his time on Honor's home world. "Fire, brimstone, the works," he continued. "You would have liked it."

She laughed bitterly.

"What's going on in this town?" he continued.

She didn't answer. He shook her viciously. "Tell me."

"Nothing good."

He loosened his grip a little, startled.

"You don't support what Daddy's doing?"

"Why do you think I'm here?" she said.

"To kill me."

She scoffed. "We could send a rookie to kill you. I've got other things to do. You're not the only Lin Kuei currently failing to serve the clan."

Sub-Zero thought for a moment. "Let me see your arm," he said.

She didn't move. He tightened his grip. "I said, let me see your arm. Remember that this is actually easier for me if you're no longer living."

She raised her arm. A burn, heavily blistered, spread across her forearm. She would be lucky if she didn't lose skin.

"He started you early, didn't he?" Sub-Zero asked. "I was told it takes decades before you start hurting yourself with your own element."

She didn't reply. Sub-Zero released her. She took a step forward and slowly spun on her toes to face him.

"You're my prisoner," he said. "You struggle or try to escape, and we will kill you. Understood?"

She shrugged and nodded.

"Back to the road," he said, pointing. She walked quietly ahead of him.

Ying Xi clapped her hands together and bowed when she saw Sub-Zero. "Oh, you're safe," she said.

"She is here?" Mistral asked, pointing one of her long arms at Enmity.

"Yes. She's our prisoner now," Sub-Zero said.

Mistral didn't back off. "But she is not bound."

"I don't actually have something to tie her up with," Sub-Zero said. "But she is bound by something stronger than ropes."

"And what is that?" Mistral asked.

"Honor," Sub-Zero said with a shrug.

The Vyrenchi nodded to him solemnly.

Enmity turned to him, her eyes questioning.

Mistral lowered her arm. "I must take some blame for this," she said. "I did not see her."

"I'm not really surprised," Sub-Zero said. "Something tells me you don't deal much with ninjas."

She cocked her head, the motion compounded by the angle drawn by her antlers.

"I'm out of practice," he said. "She's good."

"Aw, thank you," Enmity said.

"You stop talking," Sub-Zero said, pointing at her. "Prisoners are not allowed to talk."

She rolled her eyes at him, then twisted her arm up to her face, inspecting the burn on her forearm and wrinkling her forehead.

"You know," Sub-Zero said, "I can give you some ice for that."

"You don't put ice on a burn," she said. "You use cold water."

"Well, it'll melt and make cold water."

She huffed at him, then dropped her arm and began striding down the road.

"Hey!" Sub-Zero yelled, dashing after her. "Where do you think you're going?" he asked when he caught up to her.

She kept walking. "If I am your prisoner, and you are going to Yen Sa's, then I am obviously going to Yen Sa's."

"Yeah, but you don't get to lead," he said. He grabbed her bicep and pulled her to a stop.

"Someone has to," she said. "None of you seem to be up to the task. Have you been trying to get there since this morning?"

"The situation is more troublesome than you might imagine."

"Oh, it must be so difficult for you," she said sarcastically.

Sub-Zero looked back. The rest of the group were standing in the middle of the road, watching he and Enmity from a distance. He turned back to her. "Hey, the girl can't ride a horse. And then we lost our horse at the same time we picked up the invalid."

Enmity appraised the white-haired woman. "She looks fit to me."

"She's a mental sort of invalid. Has to be led. A two-year-old would make better time. Crawling."

"How sad," Enmity said. She wrenched her arm out of his grip, turned on her heel, and continued walking.

Sub-Zero watched her a moment, then turned and yelled, "Hey, what are you guys doing? Let's get going. We shouldn't have to camp overnight on a trek across _Yanxubin_."

* * *

Sorceress Ennir lay on her divan, propping herself up with her elbows. She had been thinking for hours, and she could feel her ideas getting stuck in the back of her mind. She knew she knew the perfect masterstroke, but she couldn't pull it to the surface.

Hours earlier, she had been watching her threads in the mirror, hoping to gain inspiration from them. The walls of her chamber were lined with mirrors again, as they should be. The uninformed would question it—she was nothing to look at anymore. But her mirrors had never been to admire a pretty face or a sleek body. Her skin was grayish and wrinkled, but she liked the way the threads got caught in the skin folds on her arms when she wrapped them around her. She had been playing with them when her mind had flashed, and she had known what to do, but the idea had disappeared as quickly as it had come, and she couldn't remember whether her idea had anything to do with threads.

The Shadow Priests milling around her room assembling the cloning apparatus were distracting her, and she was about to order them to go line up against the wall and be quiet when her door opened.

Rain walked in, approached her, and knelt.

"Ah, how are things?" she asked.

"There is a problem," he answered. "My duty calls me away."

"What duty?" she hissed.

"The nomads don't seem to be cooperating," he said. "I have to go enforce some loyalty."

"Well, this is all a question of loyalty, isn't it?" she said, sitting up.

"What do you mean?"

"_Someone_ has to go enforce loyalty."

"Yes," he agreed slowly. "Someone does."

"And it will not be you."

"My duty to Shao Kahn is—"

"You have no duty to Shao Kahn," Ennir snapped. "Your duty is to command my Shadow Priests." She turned to wave at them and noticed they had all lined up against the wall and were being quiet. She didn't remember ordering them and glanced quickly at the cloning equipment. "Ah!" she said. "They've finished." She folded her hands together. "What will you do with them now?"

Rain didn't answer for a moment. "I think I ought to take them and set up guard around the palace. We seem to have a slight weakness where portals are concerned, but they can close them if they're close enough."

"You'll take all of them?"

"I shall certainly leave some here for an honor guard."

The tendrils of thought in the back of her mind unstuck and coalesced. Ennir sat up and smiled at him. "You really think my honor needs guarding?"

"It's the only honor worth guarding," he said.

Ennir nodded. Rain stood, and motioned at the Shadow Priests. They turned as one and began to float toward Rain, snaking around Ennir's divan to follow him out of the room. The first two stopped at the door and took up posts beside it, the others floating serenely between them and through the doorway.

As soon as the door closed behind the last of them, Ennir sprang off her divan and strode over to the large cabinet in the corner. She flung open the door and began to pull down the ingredients she would need to summon the souls of the dead.


	16. Chapter Fifteen

**Transposition**  
by Nyohah

**Chapter Fifteen**

* * *

Tanya fiddled with her earring. Rain sat across the table, separated from her by the remains of a crustacean and a bottle of wine. She cocked her head and let her fingers drop to brush across her mouth.

"I don't get it," she said.

"I've told you before," said Rain.

"No," she answered, frowning. "No, I don't think you have."

Rain sighed and leaned back. "I told you," he repeated. "I told you we would have to take on extra duties. I told you how important it was."

"But that was—" She let her hand drop to the table and laughed. "That was dressing up like we meant it and talking like we meant it and attending some dreary rallies in the arena to get the troops in a violent mood."

Rain didn't move, staring at her from across the table.

"I thought," she said quietly.

Rain lean forward, suddenly, reaching across the table to take her hand. "Tanya. You have so much more potential than that."

She blushed. "But you didn't say anything about me doing your work."

"It can't be helped, Tanya. I'm overwhelmed." He shook his head. "And unfortunately, the great Kahn has not yet invented time travel."

Tanya lowered her gaze to the table. "But there are other people."

"You really think I ought to trust my work to other people?"

"Is it so important?" she asked, looking up at him again.

"It's crucial, Tanya. I need to you go to the mutants and ensure they're preparing as they've been ordered to."

"What?" Tanya pushed back from the table and stood; her wine glass fell over.

"Tanya," Rain said admonishingly, rising from the table more slowly.

"The mutants?" she shrieked.

"They're a critical part of our strike force," Rain said reasonably, rounding the table toward her. "It takes someone of great poise and confidence to get their respect. You're the only person left in this palace with the bearing to pull it off. We can't afford to lose them."

"But something—something _terrible_ could happen to me." Tanya put her hands over her heart.

"I can't imagine what," Rain said. "Stop overreacting."

"I won't do it."

"Tanya." Rain grabbed her hands. "Calm down. There's no reason to betray your master because you're nervous. I'll send instructions; you'll deliver them. It will be quick."

"You need me?" Tanya asked.

"I need you."

* * *

Yuan stood just outside Mr. Yen's back doorway as daylight quickly faded. He shone his flashlight at a spot two stories up where electrical wires entered the building and turned in place, tracking the indistinct but fully intact lines until they hit the pole near the edge of the trees. Nodding once to himself, he started off in the same direction as the lines.

He knew it was a little stupid to try to fix the power lines at night. He had intended to do it hours earlier, but the arrival of the Earth warriors had rearranged everyone's plans, especially his. He had been making introductions all evening, and though he would much rather be inside with Ching, he had twice as many people bugging him about the power as before, and he wouldn't get anyone to leave him alone if he didn't fix it.

Besides, it was well more than a little stupid to be trying to fix the power lines at all, so there was no use putting off his inevitable crispy death. At least he had the small comfort of knowing that if he caught fire, he could put himself out. He also had a small bag slung over his shoulder filled with anything he could find in the labs that might help him—welders, the thickest cable he could find, and rolls and rolls of electrical tape. Still, if he didn't find some sort of a transformer junction to turn off the power to Mr. Yen's house the nonviolent way, he was going to have to find someone with extremely deft telekinetic powers to fix the power lines for him.

Or he could ask Raiden to put a hand on either end and stand there like a good little thunder god.

He passed the pole and headed back into the trees. They had been cleared around the power lines and were well kept, so he could see the sky above him where there would soon be stars. Luckily, the poles had been shortened to save wood as he grew farther from Mr. Yen's house, bringing the lines closer to the ground. They were getting hard enough to see as it was.

He hadn't needed to worry about missing the break in the lines, though. The ends of the severed lines lay on the ground between two poles, themselves conspicuous, and the neat oblong burnt patch around them even more so. The ground was covered in dead leaves, which would have made good kindling, but the burnt patch had obviously been created by a controlled fire that had lived and died before the lines ever hit the ground. The lines, too, were melted at the ends but also cleanly snapped. The ninja who had attacked Mr. Yen's house had probably weakened them with fire, then used throwing stars to bring them down. And some people said ninjas had no place in the twentieth century.

Yuan circled carefully around the burnt patch. The lines were lying calmly on the ground, but he was still wary that they might suddenly snap around in search of a better conduit to ground than, well, ground. He kept his flashlight focused on the line he was heading toward, watching it for any sign of movement. A noise behind made him jump and whirl suddenly. His flashlight swung in a wide circle, overshooting the other broken end of the power line until he brought it back and steadied it. The line was absolutely stationary. He took a deep calming breath that cleared his mind enough to furrow his forehead. Something he had seen in the flicker revealed by the movement of his flashlight hadn't been quite right. He moved the flashlight more slowly through the half-circle it had previously traced, but seeing nothing out of the ordinary, moved on.

He was relieved to see a substation in the diffuse distant glow of his flashlight after passing only a few more poles. He had thought there was one around, both from a dim memory of having seen it before and from the logic that Mr. Yen's company used a lot of power and was quite a distance from town. The substation was hidden in a little house, like a fairy tale's cottage in the woods, only more frighteningly lethal than those in any of the stories Yuan had ever heard. The front door was padlocked and covered in warning signs. Yuan froze the lock and snapped it off, then swung the door open.

The interior of the substation was even darker than the night outside. Yuan swung the flashlight around the walls and quickly found the large metal box he was looking for. There were ten breakers in a row, and a larger one set a little apart. The larger breaker controlled power to the station from its source, and it was flipped on. Eight of the smaller ones were off and marked as not in use, primed for an expansion in the area that Yuan doubted was going to come. The other two were on and marked as heading off toward the highway and Mr. Yen's house, respectively. Yuan reached forward and flipped the breaker for Mr. Yen's house. He was about to sigh and turn around to work whatever magic he could on the downed lines when he took another look at the labels on the breakers and frowned. If both the power at Mr. Yen's house and at the gas station by the highway was off, and both the breakers were on, then the broken power lines were not the reason—or rather, not the only reason—that Mr. Yen had no power. Yuan doubted the female ninja would have cut power to the station purposely, but he also doubted that, given the well-planned job she had done cutting Mr. Yen's power lines, she could have made any sort of mistake.

He looked up. There were, of course, fluorescent lights mounted to the ceiling, and Yuan quickly found the switch by the door. He flipped it on. Nothing. He shook his head, grinning a little. The main breaker was labeled wrong. He flipped it down. Still nothing.

He grabbed his head in his hands, accidentally whacking himself with his flashlight, and suppressed a frustrated noise. Someone further up the line had shut off the power to the entire substation.

He smacked the main breaker, turning it back on, and walked out of the substation, tossing his bag of supplies on the ground outside. He sighed, finally, deeply, and turned his flashlight toward the highway, along which he knew the highest voltage lines ran until they—and the highway—neared Yanxubin's main power station. He was debating whether to investigate further—whether he had the patience and whether it was safe—when he noticed that directly in the path of his flashlight was a strange-looking shadow. A shadow in the middle of a clearing.

He wiggled the flashlight a little.

A shadow in the middle of a clearing with its own shadow.

He cocked his head and moved forward, reaching out a finger. When he got near enough, he poked the shadow in its very solid chest. He raised his eyebrows and looked up. The shadow punched him in the face.

* * *

"Do you think we ought to be at Mr. Yen's yet?" Biao Ying Xi asked, looking up at the stars as she walked. "I can't see a thing, and you lost me when we left the road."

"I know exactly where we are," Sub-Zero snapped. "We'll come around the back."

"I came this way," Enmity said.

"You be quiet, already."

She made a snooty little noise through her nose and tossed her head.

Sub-Zero's nostrils flared as he glared at her profile. He looked over his shoulder at the rest of the party, Lundiy still pulling the white-haired woman, Mistral barely visible, serving as rear guard. Honor kept pace just behind Enmity, disappearing and reappearing at frequent, regular intervals, keeping close enough to Enmity to immobilize her if necessary but also keeping out of Ying Xi's path, which trailed a little behind and between the two ninjas.

"Are you looking for it, too?" Enmity asked.

Sub-Zero turned quickly back to face her, to find her also looking over her shoulder. "Looking for what?" he asked warily.

"I keep feeling something," she said. "It makes my spine tingle."

"Oh, that," he answered in relief. "That's nothing. Just ignore it."

"It's irritating."

"You have no idea," he muttered, turning his head back to the path ahead of him. As he walked, he became aware of an uneasy feeling traveling down _his_ spine. He looked back at Enmity to see she was watching him, one eyebrow slightly raised. "What is it now?" he demanded.

"Do you have a ghost?"

Sub-Zero raised his eyebrows at her, but didn't answer, looking away from her again.

"You _were_ being hunted by a vengeful spirit," she continued, "were you not? I assume you vanquished this spirit, since you are here, alive. But if you didn't vanquish it fully, and it follows you still, unable to harm you to fulfill its vengeance—"

"It's not a vengeful spirit," he interrupted. "I'm just—" he sighed, "—cursed, all right?"

Honor mewled plaintively in his head, and Sub-Zero turned around to give him a shrug.

"Cursed?" asked Enmity

Sub-Zero turned back and glared at her. "Look, _I'm_ not the one who should be under interrogation."

"Fine." She finally looked away from him. "Interrogate me."

"Fine," Sub-Zero said, looking back at the path ahead of him.

Silence. Finally.

=If you truly hate us,= Honor's voice came into his head, quavering, =we—=

Sub-Zero spoke up hurriedly. "You said I wasn't the only Lin Kuei failing to serve the clan. What did you mean?"

Enmity crossed her arms. "My father decided to change the way this community functioned yesterday. Some of the Lin Kuei didn't agree. I've been hunting them down all day."

"I'm not buying it," Sub-Zero answered. "You said he wouldn't send you to kill me, but there you were. You were talking about yourself."

She laughed. "Nonsense. I really was sent to kill you."

"When a novice could do the job?"

"Clearly he thinks more highly of you than I do."

"Oh? And who was right?"

Enmity rolled her eyes.

"I don't believe you," Sub-Zero said. "If you were ordered to kill me, you'd be trying even now."

Enmity sighed. "I've just been thinking, is all."

"About what?"

She looked at him from the corners of her eyes. "Things."

"That's all you'll give me? Things?"

"I had intended to take it up with the warriors holed up in Yen Sa's house. Which, conveniently, is where I am headed now."

Sub-Zero snorted. "Very reassuring. I completely trust you now."

"Don't worry," Enmity said. "I don't need your help getting into Yen Sa's house; I certainly didn't last night. If I was planning to kill them all, I wouldn't allow their allies to join them first, would I?"

"I'm not worried," he answered. "You're bound by my staunchest ally."

Enmity raised an eyebrow again. "Honor."

"Precisely." He began to turn to smile in Honor's direction but heard something coming from ahead of them.

He and Enmity's head snapped in each other's direction simultaneously.

"Quiet," he hissed.

"You heard that?" she asked.

He nodded. There was definitely a disturbance somewhere ahead of them. Sub-Zero listened for a moment. He thought it sounded like fighting. Then he heard someone yell, "Ow!" and turned abruptly to face the rest of the party.

"You all stay here. Don't move unless something comes that's trying to kill you. Understand?"

Ying Xi nodded, but he knew she didn't understand, so he watched the others. Enmity rolled her eyes at him. Mistral shrugged. Lundiy fussed with the white-haired woman.

He turned and hurried off, weaving through the trees. The sounds of the struggle were growing louder, and he had just heard a petulant "Come back where I can see you!" when he hit a clearing. The silhouette of a small man stood near the middle of it, swinging around wildly with a flashlight. He turned around, and the beam hit Sub-Zero, blinding him. The smaller man froze. Sub-Zero squinted, unable to see who was holding the flashlight, but a moment later the beam swung erratically as something darker than a shadow and a lot heavier hit the flashlight-holding man with a flying kick.

The flashlight-holding man hit the ground, and Sub-Zero jumped toward the shadow, kicking it in the stomach. The shadow fought back, and Sub-Zero countered, watching for movement in the darkness, but listening more than watching and trusting his instincts as much as his senses. It was going well for him until he and his opponent were hit with the flashlight beam again, and Sub-Zero instinctively closed his eyes against the glare, seeing just enough of his opponent in the sudden flash of light to recognize that he wore full Lin Kuei regalia, every piece absolute black, his skin as dark as his clothing. When he forced his eyes open again, the shadow-ninja was gone.

Sub-Zero spun in place, searching hopelessly for movement in the darkness. Where was Honor when you needed it? "Will you shut that thing off!" he growled at the man on the ground.

"Nei Jen?"

Sub-Zero froze.

"Nei Jen!" The light from the flashlight wobbled as the man stood. "We thought you were dead. It nearly scared _me_ to death, seeing you standing in the woods like that."

"Yuan?" Sub-Zero asked.

"Who else?" His brother lowered the flashlight a little, finally, taking the beam out of Sub-Zero's eyes. "You look all right for someone's who supposed to be toasty."

"Yes, everyone's very surprised," Sub-Zero said irritably. "Who's the shadow ninja? I've never seen that power before."

"What do you mean?"

"The man I was just fighting before you gave him an opportunity to flee with your stupid flashlight."

"He's not a ninja."

"He was dressed like one."

"Oh?" Yuan sounded thoughtful. "I didn't notice."

"I was close. I did." When his brother didn't answer him for a moment, Sub-Zero prompted him, knowing that thoughtful tone of voice all too well. "What is it?"

"Oh, nothing," Yuan said. "I just—didn't think he was Lin Kuei is all, but it makes more sense than the alternative, I suppose."

"Well, I guess we won't know," Sub-Zero said pointedly, "since we lost him."

"Yes," his brother answered, matching his tone. "Unfortunately, as he's invisible, he's almost impossible to see."

"He's not invisible," Sub-Zero said, exasperated. "We were just talking about what he looked like."

"Near enough," Yuan said. "Where've you been, anyway?"

"Held captive," Sub-Zero said shortly. "More recently, I was at our house."

Yuan scoffed. "Well, you sure came the long way around."

"What are you complaining about? I saved your life."

Yuan scowled at him. "No, you didn't."

"Yes, I did. That thing would have killed you."

"I was handling it fine."

"Look, Yuan, you may be technically good at martial arts, but you'd never hold your own in a real fight."

"Never—" Yuan made an offended noise. "I got third place at Mortal Kombat. I'll wager that's better than you did, since it took you two years to come home."

"Mortal Kombat?" Sub-Zero demanded. He grabbed Yuan's shoulder. "How'd you go to Mortal Kombat?"

"Vendetta sent me," Yuan answered flatly. "I joined the Lin Kuei after you died."

Sub-Zero dropped his arms away from his brother. "Why—"

"It wasn't my choice, all right? Anyway, Mortal Kombat was basically all I ever did for them, so don't look so worried. I didn't usurp your glory or anything. He gave me the same code name to try to pass me off as you, but that was never going to work."

"Usurp my glory? You probably killed it." Sub-Zero shook his head. "I can't believe Vendetta made you a ninja. You may be a good fighter, but you're a terrible ninja. 'I can't see it.' Really."

Yuan scowled again. "Well, not everyone's psycho like you. And Vendetta's gone a little mad, though I hate to admit it since it plays better for your argument than mine. And I guess you already knew it since you kept a one-mile radius around town." Yuan rubbed his shoulder, then perked up suddenly. "Oh! But Vendetta's always been mad—he was the one who betrayed mom and dad in the war—so what kind of judgment did he have when he made _you_ a ninja?"

"He what?" Sub-Zero said.

Yuan stood up straighter. "Well, see, we're not really human. Nobody in this town is, I—"

"It was him?" Sub-Zero rubbed his forehead. "Of course it was him. How stupid."

"You knew we weren't, I gather," Yuan said. "Well, isn't that nice. Nobody ever bothered to tell me."

"You weren't born yet; I remember it. It's not that anyone likes me better." Sub-Zero rubbed the bridge of his nose. "I'm told our family has been hiding in Mr. Yen's house."

"You've got someone with you?" Yuan sounded like he didn't believe it.

"I've got a whole herd of someones," Sub-Zero said. "All of them female. Two of them are even interesting. All of them would rather be in Mr. Yen's house than standing back in the forest where I left them."

Yuan looked out at the dark forest. "I have to agree."

* * *

Hua Ching Sa squeezed water out of the end of her hair and flung it over her shoulder. It slapped against the middle of her back, wetting the thin material of the pajamas Yen Mulan had lent her. She yawned and stretched, then looked at the clock. Thirty minutes. She hadn't expected to be in the shower that long, but the hot water had felt so nice she had stayed until it went away. She should have guessed that in a mansion that would take considerably longer than in Yuan's old Hong Kong warehouse apartment. But it had been her first shower in months; by averages, she was still very thrifty.

Thirty minutes. If Yuan wasn't back, it could easily be something innocuous and entirely his fault, but with hostile ninjas wandering the whole town, it wasn't wise to assume anyone was safe. It he wasn't back, it was time to go after him.

She left one of Mr. Yen's numerous spare bedrooms and headed straight for the kitchen. Kung Lao was sitting at the table, playing cards with Mulan, his bladed hat on the end of the table away from them. Mulan smiled at her as she walked toward the kitchen door. Kung Lao glanced back at her, then did a double take. Hello Kitty pajamas were quite a departure from Shao Kahn's typical female ninja uniform. Kung Lao didn't say anything, though, for which Ching was thankful. She wouldn't have known how to respond.

"Is Yuan back?" she asked as she walked to the door.

As soon as Mulan responded, "Not yet," Ching opened the kitchen door. She looked into the darkness, expecting to search in vain for some sort of movement. Instead she saw a mass of movement—several people approaching, straight toward the door she had opened. She closed the door and locked it before easing away from it toward a counter. She had taken great care to orient herself to Mr. Yen's house before her shower and pulled open the drawer containing his carving knives without even looking, glancing down only momentarily to carefully ease out one of the largest.

"Is something going on?" Kung Lao asked.

"Someone's coming," Ching said.

"Yuan?" asked Mulan.

"Not unless he cloned himself a few times."

Chairs scraped on the kitchen tile, and Kung Lao stepped to the other side of the door, his bladed hat in hand. Ching glanced at the table and saw that Mulan had gone.

The door knob jiggled, at first gently, but then more violently. Someone began to pound.

"Ching! Hey, Ching! Why'd you lock me out?"

Ching stepped in front of the door and glanced out the small glass panes set into its top third. She unlocked the door and opened it, and Yuan stepped in, followed by a man taller than he and five women of varying heights and coloring.

"Who are these people?" Ching asked.

"It's all right, Ching," Yuan answered. "They're with us."

"They look like ninjas," she said, pointing at the taller man with her knife.

"Some of us are," the man said. "But aim that at her." He jerked his head at the female ninja standing beside him.

"Where is everybody?" Yuan asked.

"In bed, I think," said Kung Lao.

"Well, go get them."

"Okay," Kung Lao said hesitantly, backing away from the group who had entered.

"Who are these people?" Ching repeated.

"This one's my friend Biao Ying Xi," Yuan said, pulling forward the youngest-looking girl. "And that's my brother. I'm not so sure about the rest."

"I thought you were dead," Ching said, looking at the older Sub-Zero.

He grimaced, then took hold of the female ninja's arm and sat her down in a chair at the end of the table farthest from the door. "This one's our prisoner," he said. "I'm not so sure about the two with the darker skin, but they brought the woman with the white hair, and she's Sindel, ex-queen of Edenia."

"What?" said the shorter of the two dark-skinned women, dropping the white-haired woman's arm like a hot pan. "You never said—" She stopped herself, running one of her hands across her mouth.

"You have betrayed us," said the taller woman, looking at Sub-Zero.

"Not really," he answered, sitting in the chair beside the female ninja.

"Not really what?" asked Jax, entering the room. Sonya, Liu Kang, and Kung Lao followed him.

"Chat is getting Tung and her husband, and Mulan is getting everyone else," Kung Lao said.

Liu Kang stopped short and grabbed Kung Lao's arm fiercely. "You didn't say Sub-Zero was here."

Kung Lao looked at Yuan then back at Liu Kang. "He lives here."

"Not that one, you idiot." Liu Kang pointed at Yuan's older brother. "The real Sub-Zero—the one who fought in the tournament where I first defeated Shang Tsung."

"First?" asked Ching. "Only."

Liu Kang ignored her. "The heartless assassin Sub-Zero, the murderer."

"Nice to see you, too," said Sub-Zero.

"This is the Sub-Zero—" Kung Lao pointed to Yuan's brother, then at Yuan, "—that you mistook this Sub-Zero for? They're not even the same size. At all."

"Isn't he dead?" asked Sonya.

"Who's dead?" asked Chat, stepping into the kitchen. Tung and her husband followed.

"No, I thought Scorpion said he wasn't dead," Jax answered.

"When was that?" asked Sonya.

"At that tournament in Outworld."

Sonya nodded in understanding. "While I was prisoner."

"So you're not dead?" asked Chat.

"No," said Sub-Zero.

"Were you ever?"

"No! But _she_ was." He pointed at the white-haired woman.

Chat glanced at the woman then aimed her arm behind her back to point at Ching. "So was she, a couple times."

"My God." Mr. Yen stopped in the doorway. "Sindel."

Yuan's mother stood on the tips of her toes to look up over Mr. Yen's shoulder. "Sindel."

She pushed her way past Mr. Yen, pulling her husband behind her. They walked past the table and past Yuan and Ching, straight for the white-haired woman. Yuan's father took the sunglasses off her face. "It is her," he said.

Yuan's older brother watched them blankly from the table.

"Uh, Mom?" said Yuan. "Dad?"

"What is it?" his father asked, a bit irritably.

Yuan pointed.

Yuan's father turned to face the table, grabbing his wife's arm and pulling her around as recognition hit his face. Yuan's mother went rigid.

Mulan pushed her way past her father, caught a glimpse of Sub-Zero, and gasped.

"You're alive," Yuan's father said.

"Yes," Sub-Zero answered.

"But how? Where have you been?"

He hesitated. "It's odd and kind of complicated."

"Were you held against your will?" Yuan's father asked. "Please tell me you were held against your will."

"Well, yes, I was, but I wasn't _technically_ a prisoner."

"How do you mean?"

"Maybe it would be easier if I just showed you," Sub-Zero told the table. He looked up and over the head of the female ninja sitting beside him. "Yes, I mean that," he said to the air.

A ninja dressed in white appeared behind the female ninja, and Yuan, standing beside Ching, jumped so much he almost lost his footing and hit the floor. The others were startled almost as much, except for Yuan's parents and Mr. Yen, who didn't even twitch, and the female ninja, who hadn't seen the ninja appear.

"Honor?" whispered Yuan's mother.

=It is we, Yuen Ming,= the immaterial ninja seemed to mew directly into Ching's mind. =We have missed you.=

"I can't believe it."

=You were our friend,= it whined.

"No, I mean I can't believe you're here," Yuan's mother amended.

The immaterial ninja disappeared from behind the female ninja to reappear in front of Yuan's mother, bowing to her deeply.

The female ninja casually watched him. "This is your Honor?" she asked, looking at Sub-Zero.

"Yes," he answered, "that's his name. But I'm not sure I can actually own him. He is a person. Sort of. I think."

"Nei Jen!" Yuan's mother snapped. "Be kind! Honor has saved our lives many times. We are greatly in his debt."

=No, we owe you debt,= Honor said, shaking its head. =We failed you. For partial redemption we saved your son and sheltered him on our world.= It hung its head. =We would have brought him sooner, but outside Mortal Kombat, this realm is protected.=

"Then how are you here now?" demanded Liu Kang. "Has the protection failed?"

=No,= said Honor. =We were invited.=

"Invited?" asked Yuan. "By who?"

=By you.=

Yuan stood up straighter.

"Yuan?" asked his father. "You knew about your brother?"

"No! I didn't know anything until he just showed up in the woods out behind the house. Something followed me out there and attacked me, and he came out of nowhere to help me drive it off."

"To be distracted by you while you let it get away is more accurate," his brother said.

"Something's loose out there?" Ching asked. "What is it?"

"Some sort of shadow ninja," Sub-Zero said. "It was dressed like Lin Kuei, but I'm not sure it was. I never knew a ninja like that." He looked pointedly at the female ninja beside him.

"I am not aware of any shadow Lin Kuei either," she said.

Yuan fidgeted. "I think it may have come from Outworld."

"What?" asked Yuan's father.

"It's not unlikely," Ching said. "The Outworld ninjas tend to wear the same sort of uniform."

"And I swear I kept seeing the same weird thing from just before we left Outworld until it attacked me," Yuan said.

"And now it's loose in Yanxubin," said Mr. Yen.

"Honor," said Sub-Zero. "I don't suppose you tracked it."

=We tried,= Honor mewed. =We lost it. It was too alien.=

"That's really saying something," Sub-Zero muttered.

"Nei Jen!" Yuan's mother snapped.

"And this Outworld shadow ninja was the reason you didn't get the power back?" asked Yuan's father.

"No," Yuan said. "I found where it was cut, but the substation itself wasn't getting any power. The power's been cut off somewhere further up the line. We can't fix it without going close to town."

"That's a bit overkill, don't you think?" said Mr. Yen, looking at the female ninja.

"I didn't do it," she answered. "It wasn't like that when I cut the line. But I know why it is now."

Everyone watched her expectantly, and she dropped her eyes to the table before looking back up at Yuan. "Smoke is in more danger than you know."


	17. Chapter Sixteen

**Transposition**  
by Nyohah

**Chapter Sixteen**

* * *

The heat of the sun cooked Kitana, even inside the tent, and she lay listlessly on her side on sand that had lost what coolness the previous evening had given it. She felt confined in the tent by the heat outside and the need to keep herself from being seen, but she knew she really ought to be grateful that she was being kept in the coolest accommodations the nomads could offer. She had no way of telling what time it was without stepping outside to see where the sun hovered in the sky, but from the heat, she judged that it was early afternoon, and thus that Djurash had been gone for several hours. However, she had been judging from the heat that it was early afternoon for some time because she continued to think it couldn't get any hotter. She continued to be wrong. Still, she was confident that Djurash had been gone a long time, and the only reason she could conceive he hadn't already returned was that the sun had cooked him literally.

The tent flap opened for a moment, and the harsh sunlight emblazoned itself as a green triangle in Kitana's vision, the silhouette of a nomad fuzzily missing from it. Kitana jumped to her feet, blinking her eyes to try to clear her vision.

"I have spread your message among the contacts," Djurash said. "You'll know the clan leaders' decisions soon enough."

"When do I get to speak to them?" Kitana asked, clasping her hands with sudden nervous energy.

"Speak to them?"

"Well, yes," said Kitana. "How can I get their support if I don't speak to them?"

Djurash shook his head. "You speak to them directly, and we all die."

"What do you mean?" Kitana floundered.

"I mean," Djurash said, stepping to his desk and slapping his board onto it, "you do anything so idiotic as to make contact with the clan leaders, and Shao Kahn will find out. He'd attack us to put us in our places for daring to think for ourselves no matter who it was who spoke to the clan leaders. They speak to a known traitor, and we're going to have that fight you want without any time to prepare for it." His eyes narrowed. "Unless that's what you want to happen."

Kitana shook her head, but he took a menacing step toward her anyway.

"If we're not true allies but just targets for you to use to pull Shao Kahn into an ambush..."

Kitana shook her head more fiercely and raised her palms in front of her chest.

"You remember what I said about being used," Djurash said quietly. "If you bring Kahn on our heads before we're ready, we'll make sure you're one of those we take with us."

"I promise you it won't happen," Kitana said.

"Liar."

"No, I'm not, I—"

Djurash raised his right arm and suddenly there was a long metal blade pointed at Kitana's throat. "You didn't come here to ally yourself with us. You're just opportunistic. Admit it."

"It's true I didn't come here expecting help from you," Kitana said quickly, her voice shrill from near panic. "I was just lost. But it's only because I thought you were loyal."

"Loyal?"

"To Shao Kahn. You wouldn't expect me to seek help among the Centaurions and the Shokans, would you?"

There was a pause, and Kitana knew that she had made herself a noose of words again.

"You compare us with them?" Djurash hissed inhumanly.

Kitana took a deep breath, forcing herself to slow down and think. "I was mistaken; I admit it. But I am not the only one to fall victim to believing what I was raised to believe. You cannot hang me for that. Even _I_ was loyal to Kahn until just a few months ago."

"Failing to find your own beliefs as you reach maturity is a fool's mistake." Djurash's voice had softened.

Kitana began to relax. "I've started to overcome my foolishness; surely you've noticed." She cocked her head, pulling her neck a few more millimeters from the blade. "Besides, it's not like I had your people lining up to prove me wrong. The only one of you I had ever spoken with prior to yesterday was General Baraka, and he never impressed me."

Djurash sniffed. "An act."

"I wouldn't be surprised," Kitana said. "But when your own leadership attempts to make everyone think the worst of you, don't be angry at those who do."

Djurash retracted his arm blade. "Low expectations work in the favor of the oppressed."

"I can see that." Kitana pulled herself into a royal stance to hide her relief. "I _know_ they'll be surprised when they find out the true worth of the nomadic army."

"'When'?" Djurash stepped backward, toward his desk, and cocked his head. "If."

Behind Kitana, the tent flap slapped open and shut just as quickly. Djurash glanced at the entrance, then extended his arm and pointed toward Kitana, his finger a chilling reminder of the blade. "Stop making stupid suggestions, and we might let you live."

"Let her live?" asked a gruff voice from behind Kitana. She turned to see the captain standing near the tent's entrance. "Not an option anymore. Those friends she claimed weren't coming are here."

The muscles in Djurash's jaw tightened.

"No!" Kitana gasped, her calm threatening to abandon her again. "I didn't summon anyone."

"How many?" asked Djurash.

"Just one," answered the captain. "So far." He grabbed Kitana by the arm and dragged her to the tent flap, pulling it open a slit. "Who is she?"

Kitana peered out the slit, craning her head to one side then the other, but she could see only nomads. Finally, one of them stepped to the side, and she saw the woman he'd been blocking from view. Tanya. She was wearing a dress Kitana had seen before—which was unusual for Tanya but made a twisted sort of sense. There was no reason to ruin a new dress in the sand, after all, and the nomads would never know the difference. In fancy silk and heeled shoes, surrounded by scruffy mutants, her excess of exposed skin beginning to redden despite its natural darkness, Tanya looked ridiculous. Kitana's initial impulse was to laugh at the sight, but the realization of the danger Tanya was in turned her stomach.

She stepped back from the flap. "Her name is Tanya, and I didn't call her here. If she finds out I'm here, I'm in trouble."

The captain looked at her impassively for a moment then turned back toward the tent flap. "Then I'll get rid of her," he said nonchalantly.

"No!" Kitana reached for the captain's tunic sleeve. "Don't kill her."

The captain rounded on her in an instant, breaking her grip on his sleeve and grabbing her arm instead. "Why not?" he demanded. "Because she's your ally?"

"No," Kitana said as calmly as she could. "Because she's not a fighter."

"Whoever said she was?" Djurash asked at the same time the captain said, "_I_ can see _that_."

"What difference does that make, anyway?" continued the captain. "We were going to kill you, remember, and it wasn't because we thought you were a fighter."

His voice broke halfway into laughter as he finished his sentence, but Kitana ignored the slight. "Killing her is only going to bring unwanted attention to us."

"No," said the captain, "it's going to bring wanted attention. The sort where they pay attention to our requests and stop sending useless people to meddle in our preparations."

"Maybe it was attention you wanted before I came," Kitana countered, "but now? Now when you might be planning conspiracy? Djurash was just explaining things to me, and I know we can't chance tipping Kahn to what we're doing."

Djurash shifted his weight. "You still don't get it," he said. "Failing to send this woman's head back in a box would make them question what's going on more than just killing her, even if she didn't report anything suspicious."

Kitana looked back toward where Tanya had been standing, but the tent flap was closed. "Is this another test? Do you expect me to let you kill her to prove something?"

"Prove what?" asked Djurash. "If you let her live, you're either her ally or you're compassionate. If you let her die, either she's not your ally, or you're just sick enough to let it happen to make us trust you so can betray us later."

Kitana sighed. "It's compassion, if it matters."

"It doesn't," said Djurash. "Rain knows that if he wants to talk to us, he talks to us himself. He also knows that if he sends someone else or lets Kahn send someone else, they don't make it back."

"_Rain_ knows?" The shock spread from Kitana's spine, leaving behind an unpleasant feverish feeling. "But that's his lover."

Djurash and the captain exchanged glances. "Are they, uh, prone to excessively violent quarrels?" Djurash asked.

"No," Kitana said, a deep pity for Tanya beginning to fill her. "He usually lets her get away with anything."

"Not the jealous type, is he?" the captain asked.

Kitana could hear in his voice that he thought half the relationship was hollow. She had begun to think it, too. "If he sent her, it could be a gesture meant to indicate she's not just any messenger," she said, grasping at a more innocuous explanation. "He couldn't come, but he sent the person closest to him to show his respect."

"Or it's just that he's fallen in so far with the witch that he doesn't care what happens to her anymore," Djurash said.

"Or he's fallen in so far with the witch he actually wants to get rid of her," said the captain. "Now that he has something he actually cared about to begin with."

"That may be," Kitana said, forcing herself to say it lightly despite her agreement. "But in that case, should we punish _her_ for it?"

"Then what do you suggest we do?" asked Djurash.

Kitana shook her head. "Tanya's not a threat. Tell her what you want her to tell Rain. She won't know the difference. And scare her if you must, but please don't hurt her." She looked at Djurash. "She's not evil; she's just a fool."

* * *

From the first step she took outside the private coach Rain had arranged to take her to the mutant's camp in the desert, Tanya understood why he had never allowed her to accompany him there before. He had talked of safety and civilization, or rather the lack of both, but he would have known that she could never stand the filth. She wasn't outside the cooled, charmed interior of her coach half an hour before she felt the first drop of sweat trickle down into her cleavage. Long before that, her face—and more disgustingly, her neck—was covered in a film of sweat. Her dress was a light silk, brief and not clingy, so it should have been as good as any of her dresses at keeping her cool. But the real reason she had chosen it was its color. It was the green of tree leaves so she could be like the sole speck of life in the desert just like she was the sole speck of civilization. But five seconds after she had stepped out of her coach, a gust of wind had coated her dress in dust, the desert choking the life out of it the same way it choked the life out of everything else except the stupid mutants.

She hadn't been outside her coach two minutes before they'd circled her and had started kicking sand at her, chuckling hoarsely at her shrieks as she tried to jump out of the way. Every sun-baked grain felt like a shard of hot coal as it hit her unprotected legs. At first it was scrawny, ugly things, not quite her height and thus apparently young. But when the soldiers joined in, Tanya really started to lose her patience.

"You can't do this!" she shouted. "I'm here standing in for Rain. You wouldn't do this to Rain!"

A mutant with a scar on his cheek stopped kicking to answer her. "No. It wouldn't work." He then extended one of his arm blades, stuck the tip of the blade into the sand, and flicked it up at her face.

The mutants howled.

"That's it!" Tanya screamed, stomping the sand and pointing a finger at Ugly Scar Face. "Rain will strip you of your rank and cut your pay!"

"Rank?" said another mutant and snorted loudly.

"How's he gonna punish me?" asked Ugly Scar Face. "You don't know my name."

"Then I'll have him punish everyone," said Tanya.

"Lady, he ain't that stupid," said Ugly Scar Face.

"Right!" shouted Tanya. "He's smart enough to figure out a way to find out who you are!"

"My soldier's correct," said a new mutant voice. Tanya turned to see a mutant with nicer clothes standing a few paces back from the circle. The mutants parted for him as he approached.

"You're from the palace," he said.

"Figure that out on your own, did you?" Tanya asked. "Rain sent me to get a status report on your preparations."

"Well, you'll have to come with me, then." The mutant gestured, and the soldiers formed lines around Tanya while the younger mutants scattered. They marched a few blocks to a tidy line of tents marking the edge of the settlement. Ugly and In Charge gestured again, and the mutants stopped.

"Stay here," said Ugly and In Charge before disappearing into one of the tents. It was several minutes before he emerged again, followed by another mutant. The new one looked taller and slimmer than Ugly and In Charge, but it could have been the way he held himself more upright, clutching a board to his chest with both arms. They slid sideways out from under the tent flap like crabs, then stood there motionless in the sun, staring at Tanya like dumb animals for a few seconds before walking up to talk to her.

Tanya rolled her eyes. "Finally," she said. "You know I can't wait forever. We have important preparations going on in the palace right now, and I am needed there."

"I'm sure," said Ugly and In Charge. "But I had to fetch my colleague, here. He has all the information you need, but sometimes it's hard to get his attention. Eh, Djurash?"

The other mutant didn't respond; he was staring off into the sky.

Ugly and In Charge turned partway around to look at him and then smacked him in the stomach with the side of his fist. "I said, eh, Djurash?"

Tanya expected the other mutant to double over from the blow, but he just jerked a little as if surprised and looked at Tanya. He had some sort of cross on his collar. "Yes, Captain, absolutely, Captain."

"Tell her what you do, Djurash," Ugly and In Charge said patiently.

"Do you organize disciplinary crucifixions?" Tanya blurted.

Ugly and In Charge's head seemed to shrink into his neck, and the other mutant's head slowly cocked to one side. "I keep columns of numbers."

"Oh, you're the keeper of the numbers," Tanya said, snapping her fingers. "That's sweet."

"Yes," he drawled. Then his voice picked up speed again. "I handle all the records. It has to be me because I'm the only one that can write."

He held out the board toward Tanya, and she swore he grinned even though she was also sure mutants didn't actually do that for the same reasons people did. "Wow, that's great," she said.

Ugly and Able to Write pulled the board back. "So I'll also be able to copy over all the records that you need. I keep very good records."

"Captain," said one of the other mutants, sounding irritated.

Tanya turned to look at him. It was Ugly Scar Face.

"Aren't we going to fight her?" he asked.

"Hey!" snapped Ugly and In Charge. "She came all the way out here to get some information for our general Rain. She's inconvenienced herself so much coming out here, it's the least we can do to inconvenience ourselves a little on her behalf."

"That's right, Miss," said Ugly and Able to Write. "It is Miss, correct? Rain hasn't actually married you?"

Tanya blinked and started to slowly shake her head, but Ugly and Able to Write didn't pause for an answer.

"If you'll just come inside my tent, I will prepare the reports for you. Normally I don't allow other people in my tent as it raises the temperature inside where I have to sit all day without the refreshing desert breezes—"

"—the siroccos—" said Ugly and In Charge.

"—the siroccos," continued Ugly and Able to Write, "gift of our kindest Lord Kahn—we pray to him every day for the nicest siroccos to relieve the heat he's given us—and the extra heat from extra bodies in the tent just makes my ink so thin I smear it over everything without even noticing, but just for you, Miss—"

Ugly and Able to Write reached out with his left hand, still clutching his board to his chest with his right, and seized Tanya's arm, starting to pull her toward the tent.

"—just for you, the cherished broad of our general Rain, I'll make an exception so your pretty skin doesn't peel off."

He pushed her into the tent, and when the tent flap closed, she was blind in the sudden dimness. She stepped back reflexively to push open the tent flap a little but encountered only a hard body.

"Unless we peel it," growled Ugly and In Charge.

* * *

The occupants of Mr. Yen's packed kitchen collectively held their breaths as they waited for the female ninja to reveal what danger threatened their captured ally.

All the occupants but one. "What about Smoke?" Sub-Zero demanded, almost before the female ninja had finished speaking.

He wasn't the only one who didn't have all the information.

"Wait, this is that female ninja?" asked Kung Lao, pointing at Enmity.

"I'm not aware that there are any other female Lin Kuei," said Li Wei Yong.

"Well, we weren't aware there were any at all," said Mr. Yen.

"And nobody's concerned or even surprised she's here?" asked Kung Lao.

"She's certainly the least surprising of our surprising visitors," said Mr. Yen.

"Well, I'm happy to be such a showstopper," said Sub-Zero dryly. "She's Vendetta's daughter, code name Enmity, and she mostly handles internal affairs, so if you've never seen her, you're lucky. What about Smoke?"

"So by internal affairs," said Mr. Lau, "you mean—"

"She kills other Lin Kuei, yes. What about Smoke?"

"You know, I understand your shock at the people who were supposed to be dead," said Kung Lao, "but why isn't anyone concerned she's here?"

"Well," said Mr. Yen, "this is a town full of magical assassins that exists thanks to a guy who liked to study history a lot, and one day while doing so tossed himself into Outworld _accidentally_ and then spent the rest of his life claiming that he survived by wagering a chance to escape against an offer to cook himself for dinner for a hoard of mutants." Mr. Yen tilted his head over his shoulder to look at Kung Lao. "Apparently mutants are congenitally incapable of making curry and will do anything for a good one."

Kung Lao blinked. "That's crazy."

"That was my point," said Mr. Yen.

"But we're not all crazy," said Mulan, from the doorway. "I'm not coming inside."

"What are you doing here being so cooperative, though?" asked Wei Yong, looking at Enmity. "I mean, last time you were here, you captured Quy Ling. Who's the target this time?"

"No, what about the power?" asked Yuan. "It was on when you cut the line, but...?"

"It's been stolen," said Enmity.

"No, no, no," said Sub-Zero.

"By whom?" asked Yuan. "For what?"

"No, no, wait!" shouted Sub-Zero.

Everyone stared at him.

"What's this about capturing Smoke?" he asked, his voice quiet but dangerous.

"He's not dead," said Enmity. "Not yet."

"Oh, that makes me feel so much better," said Sub-Zero. "What did you do with him?" he shouted.

"Look, I'm really sorry; I really am; believe me," said Enmity.

"Not likely," said Sub-Zero.

"It's awful, but I didn't know," she said. "I was confused when I was ordered to spy on Yen Sa's business, but Vendetta hates Yen Sa. I thought I was planning an assassination attempt. It wasn't until I saw what he did with the scientists I kidnapped that I understood."

"What'd he do with them?" asked Mr. Yen, suddenly pale.

"He put them to work," said Enmity.

"That's less gruesome than I was expecting," said Kung Lao.

"No, I think it's more," said Enmity. "Vendetta's trying to make the ultimate warrior by making robots out of ninjas." She looked down at her hands. "And that's your answer, Li Yuan Syei Nah."

"Don't use my full name," Yuan said reflexively, pale like Mr. Yen.

Ming turned to her son. "I don't understand."

"Mechanical bodies don't get tired," Yuan answered, his face blank. "And they can have greater strength without having to spend time to maintain it."

Jax slowly moved his silver arms behind his back.

"Theoretically, they have infinite patience," Yuan continued, "and unshakable loyalty. They're programmable and capable of greater physical precision than any living thing." He shook his head. "The mechanics are there but the controller's a problem. You can make a robot that looks like a human, but you can't make one that moves like a human or adapts like a human. The human brain is too complex for modern artificial intelligence to even approximate."

"So you use a human brain itself for the controller," said Mr. Yen.

"But it's not true," said Ying Xi. "You can't do it."

Mr. Yen put his hands over his face. "I feel so stupid."

"This is the kind of stupid that stems from being smart, isn't it, Yen Sa?" said Wei Yong. "You were working on this?"

"No, we weren't," said Mr. Yen. "We were trying to make chips to repair abnormal brain function. A work-around for brain damage, to help people. But..."

"But that's science for you," said Yuan, staring at the ground. "Someone's always ready to corrupt it."

"And these chips of yours could be used to make a robot out of a person?" said Wei Yong.

"Not alone," said Mr. Yen. "But they would be a crucial link in the automation. I wouldn't be surprised if everything else was run of the mill."

"And I take it Smoke is scheduled for this automation," said Sub-Zero, looking back at Enmity.

Enmity nodded. "Vendetta doesn't want to waste him, though, and they're still trying to get it to work."

"But as soon as they get it to work, he's next," said Sub-Zero. "And you just conveniently failed to mention this at any time during our long walk here."

Enmity looked away from him.

"Well, fine." Sub-Zero stood up and yanked Enmity out of her chair. "We fix it now."

"Nei Jen, what are you doing?" asked Ming.

"Getting Smoke back," said Sub-Zero. "Someone should have gone after him immediately."

"And her?" asked Wei Yong.

"She's going to show me where to go," said Sub-Zero, leading Enmity to the door. "I know headquarters pretty well, but I expect not nearly as well as she does." He looked at her. "Unfortunately, I don't expect her to be much of a bargaining chip."

"You can't trust her," said Wei Yong.

"Don't worry about that," said Sub-Zero. "She'll just have to know that if anything goes wrong, she's the first person I kill." He opened the door and pushed Enmity out into the grass. "Come on, Honor. You can help, too."

The door slammed shut behind him, Honor sliding through it a moment later.

* * *

The door to Smoke's cell opened and brought with it a rush of welcome fresh air, but the intensity of the light it also brought made him squeeze his eyes shut and jerk his head back into the wall. He grimaced up at Vendetta.

"I'd wager this isn't good news for me," he said.

"Oh, there's good news for you," said Vendetta. "But it's also good news for me."

"The ceiling's not collapsing on us?"

"What?"

"Oh, nothing," said Smoke. "I was trying to think of ways in which our interests aligned."

"Very funny," said Vendetta gruffly. "My news isn't so urgent. _We've_ known for ages."

"Maybe we knew and just didn't care," said Smoke with a shrug. "I've mentioned our interests don't align?"

"They don't have to align to overlap," said Vendetta. "It's about those kids."

Smoke raised his eyebrows.

"The ones no one can seem to make dead," Vendetta said. "There's a reason for that."

"Oh, please, enlighten me," said Smoke.

"They're supposed to be the undoing of my allies," said Vendetta. "Prophetically."

"Is that all?" said Smoke. He snorted. "I guess I've known longer than you have."

"Oh, Hua Sa," said Vendetta in the most mild tone of voice Smoke had ever heard him use, apparently pleased with himself. "You've been trying to fool me the entire time you've been down here. What makes you think I'm going to believe you now?"

"It wouldn't be the most grievous mistake you've ever made," said Smoke. "Not by far. But before you think yourself a brilliant reader of men, consider how everyone else has treated those two."

"I know a great deal about how they have been treated," said Vendetta. "My allies spent a lot of time and effort corrupting your daughter, but the Li brat was able to undo it somehow. He'd claim love or something equally nauseating, I suspect." Vendetta snorted quietly. "No one bothered to tell me about _him_ until recently, or I could have concentrated on corrupting him instead of his brother and perhaps prevented it." Vendetta looked Smoke in the eyes. "But I am not responsible for the failings of my masters."

"Not _you_," Smoke said derisively. "I wasn't talking about _you_. Consider what _we_ did to _protect_ them."

"Protect them?" asked Vendetta. He laughed sharply. "You got your daughter into this mess."

"I sent my daughters away because I knew they were special," Smoke said. "You know it wasn't because I didn't think I could take care of them. Yen Sa and the queen would have done anything to help my wife's daughters."

Vendetta waved a hand. "It wasn't about them. You didn't have a choice. That was the work of a village that hates you."

"Yes, they hate me," said Smoke. "Incidentally, not as much as they're going to hate you after you make their sons into robots. But no, do you think some angry peasants could actually force me into anything? Me, with the entire remaining honor guard behind me? Except you, of course, but you'd only help the peasants if you saw some way to exploit them. I let them go."

"It's a clever rationalization, Hua Sa," said Vendetta, "but it's not convincing. We're only concerned with one of your daughters."

"Then don't believe me," said Smoke. "But consider Yuan. Didn't we all work very hard to keep him secret from you?"

"Work very hard?" scoffed Vendetta. "None of you acted like you knew he was anything more than a dilettante."

"Yes," said Smoke, "Didn't we all work very hard to encourage him to prove his skills in show? I remember Rah Cai Yue, and I remember how much you disdained him. I even encouraged Yuan in behaviors that were in any way reminiscent of Rah Cai Yue—though I saw how it pained the queen—because I knew if there was one person you'd never believe could beat you, it was Rah Cai Yue. You thought he was just a silly, rich boy who trivialized and wasted his own talent only to gain fame by luck of birth and association. And you know as well as I do that heroes aren't born of women; they're born of pain. You've helped make a few."

Vendetta had frozen.

"And consider," Smoke continued, lifting a finger. "Yuan has suffered. My daughter has suffered. And _you're_ to blame for it." Smoke looked Vendetta in the eyes and knew that under his mask, his teeth were clenched and his nostrils flared. He could see that vein on his forehead. "So when death comes for you, just remember who to blame."

There was silence for a moment.

Smoke added, "It's one of the many people who did, in fact, lose to Rah Cai Yue."

Vendetta breathed in loudly through his nose. "How did you know?" he snapped.

"I was there."

Vendetta dropped into a crouch beside Smoke and grabbed his shirt with both hands. "You know what I meant!"

"I just told you how I knew, Vendetta, in great length."

"Don't lie!" Vendetta shook him roughly. "Who told you?"

Smoke shook his head. Vendetta slammed him against the wall.

"Tell me who told you!" he shouted, slamming Smoke into the wall again.

Smoke continued to shake his head weakly, stars fading from his vision.

Vendetta threw him back and stood. He was still for a moment, then began to pace back and forth restlessly, alternately casting shadows on Smoke and revealing the light from the doorway. Smoke watched him, blinking, waiting for the inevitable violence.

Vendetta chuckled.

"Gone mad, have you?" asked Smoke, allowing himself to take his eyes off Vendetta to try to rub them on a shoulder to clear his vision.

"No," said Vendetta slowly. "In fact, I think I've just understood you."

"I've been speaking plainly," said Smoke.

"You've been contradicting yourself," spat Vendetta. "I sent you to Mortal Kombat after the Li brat because I was hoping you'd get yourself killed, too. In reach of the very evil that destroyed your world, your people, and indirectly, your wife? In the midst of a plot to resurrect the driving force behind all our plots? Any hot-blooded warrior would have tried to destroy the evil, to thwart evil's plans. He'd have died in the effort, even knowing that he was going to die. But you? You concentrated on finding a loophole to protect your precious protégé and left your own daughter behind."

Smoke couldn't quite manage to shake his head.

"It could have been that you had a brilliant master plan," Vendetta said. He made a fist and pumped it in the sky. "They needed more pain to make them better heroes!" He snorted and dropped his arm. "But not you. You were just afraid."

Smoke looked away.

"Look at you: you won't even deny it," said Vendetta. "You saw real power, and it terrified you. It frightened you so much you pulled back to wait for the prophecies to take over the fight for you."

Vendetta crouched beside Smoke. "You say that I have made heroes with pain," he said quietly. "But you're no hero."

Smoke closed his eyes.

Outside, one of the guards yelped. The sound was muffled and abbreviated but unmistakable.

Smoke snapped open his eyes as Vendetta jumped to his feet. Smoke could feel the heat washing off his old master's arms as he prepared to strike.

The silhouette of a male ninja appeared in the door, the collar of a limp, sprawling guard in each hand. Vendetta froze. Smoke craned his neck.

"Nei Jen?" he whispered.

But the ninja lifted first one guard and then the other with a single arm and threw them into the corner of the cell, where they formed a grotesque pile, clearly dead. And as the shadow stepped into the cell and away from the glare, he remained a shadow, even his skin a solid, uniform black.

"Your ninjas are well trained, Number Four," said the shadow, his voice an airy whisper. "I didn't expect any of them to have the time to make a sound."

"What are you?" Vendetta demanded. "What are you doing here?"

"I am the one called Number Six," said the shadow, "or Noob Saibot in the old language of Edenia. And we've all been wondering the same about you. What are _you_ doing here?"


	18. Chapter Seventeen

**Transposition**  
by Nyohah

**Chapter Seventeen**

* * *

After the door slammed behind Sub-Zero and Enmity, no one spoke for some time. Yuan tapped his fingers against his lips, contemplating neural-electrical interfaces.

"What was that thing in our heads?" Tung asked suddenly.

Yuan looked up and almost started a circuit description before he realized she wasn't referring to the thing he was imagining placing in people's heads. "What thing?" he asked, covering, then quickly added, "Oh, that thing." He turned to his mother. "What was that thing?"

"Honor is a Vyrenchi," she said absently. "They're energy beings—made of energy, able only to affect energy. They're very powerful and can't really be killed. I don't think Kahn has taken their home world." She looked at Raiden for confirmation. A few seconds after his nod, she added, "Honor was sort of my bodyguard during the war."

"What war?" asked Sonya.

Yuan's mother stared at her for a few seconds. "It's not important," she said finally, looking down at her fingers.

Yuan turned away from her and saw in the corner the three women who had arrived with his brother. The two copper-skinned and muscular women were dressed in brown leather and stood on either side and slightly behind the middle one, the white-skinned, white-haired woman called Sindel. "I don't think we've been introduced," he said. "I'm Yuan Li, and as a group, we're previous participants in Mortal Kombat and others who have fought against the, uh, allied dark forces. Mortal Kombat is a tournament—"

"We know Mortal Kombat," said the taller of the two women. "We are Kitsune."

"Elite Edenian warriors," Yuan's father said helpfully.

"You come from Edenia?" asked Liu Kang.

"No, Argentina," said the shorter of the two women. "I'm Lundiy, and my partner is Mistral."

"When Edenia fell," said Yuan's father, "those Edenians who joined us—the Mandalorians—in escaping went through a portal and landed here, where we built Yanxubin. The Edenians left, for South America, apparently. And now, the Kitsune thrive, and they've brought us their dead queen."

"We don't thrive," said Lundiy. "We did, I suppose, but..." She covered her mouth with her hands.

"This thing killed everyone," Mistral finished, jiggling Sindel's arm.

"Why'd you bring her here then?" demanded Sonya.

"She hasn't—" Lundiy began. "No, I mean, I think she's controllable. Um, Mistral and I were outside the village when it happened. When we returned, everyone was dead, and she was standing in the middle of the carnage, screaming—in horror, I think."

"You think she's not evil anymore?" Yuan asked. He traded a look with Ching, remembering the last pages of her letter to him.

Ching looked far away. "The blood was not ideal."

"Excuse me?" asked Lundiy politely.

"What are you talking about?" asked Sonya, less politely.

"You tell them," Yuan said.

Ching nodded. "It was after the second tournament. Shang Tsung showed me an image of a woman in a scrying pool—this woman." She pointed at Sindel. "He said she was the resurrected Empress Sindel, and she was Shao Kahn's key to the Earth. Normally he can't enter our realm, but to reclaim his queen, he could. And once he's here, what's to stop him from staying?"

"Then why isn't he here now?" asked Liu Kang.

"It's a mess in Outworld," Ching said, "and Yuan's rescue foray didn't help matters, but trust me, they're preparing."

"What does this have to do with blood?" asked Mr. Yen.

Ching acknowledged him with a nod, then looked around at Liu Kang, Kung Lao, Jax, and Raiden. "Do you remember in that tournament how there were so many rules about when you could kill an opponent? It was strange, right? It's Mortal Kombat. Killing your opponent is traditional. It's expected. The rules were there because the tournament was nothing but a harvest for the last ingredient they needed to resurrect Sindel and turn her to their side. They must have needed the blood of an Earth warrior who was killed after losing three rounds in Mortal Kombat. But we did too well, and the only Earth warrior who died was Johnny Cage."

"And he was only defeated twice," said Liu Kang.

"Yeah, Baraka killed him," said Kung Lao. "And I remember the ridiculous fit Shang Tsung threw about it. I guess this puts it into perspective, though. I always just thought it meant he was a prima donna."

"He was," said Ching. "But it also meant that Cage's blood—the only blood they had available to use in the ritual to bind Sindel to them—was not ideal for their purposes. And its bind over her must have broken."

"And _voila_," said Yuan. "No more evil."

"Does that mean Kahn can't come to claim her anymore?" asked Kung Lao.

"Do you want to bet on wishful thinking?" asked Ching.

"Then it's time we suit up for Mortal Kombat," said Kung Lao.

Ching shook her head.

"We have to take the fight to them this time," said Yuan.

"Which we did last time," said Kung Lao.

"Were you even at the last tournament?" asked Yuan. "The only reason it ended in our favor was that we found loopholes! We can't just play by their rules. It's not sane. They're designed for us to lose."

"The Mortal Kombat tournament," said Liu Kang, "was agreed upon by the gods to protect our realm."

"Then they're idiots!" shouted Yuan, slapping his palm on the counter.

Raiden slowly turned his head in Yuan's direction, his coolie hat obscuring his face.

Yuan felt his heart convulse once, irregularly, and stood up straight. "Sorry," he said hastily.

"You are correct," Raiden said. "The Mortal Kombat tournament was agreed upon by the gods, but it was the idea of Shang Tsung."

"Well, see, then?" said Yuan, placing a hand over his heart. "That's my point."

"But," Raiden said firmly, "it remains this realm's best defense. When Shang Tsung became allied with Shao Kahn, we feared that the Earth had been doomed. Shao Kahn cannot conquer a realm without first weakening its defenses somehow. Shang Tsung could do it from the inside. As a person born of this realm, he could not be denied access to it. He traded his right to exist in this realm freely for an island from which he could host a tournament that would formalize Kahn's attempts to conquer the realm. The gods traded the certainty that Earth would be opened to Outworld's forces for the possibility that we would lose Mortal Kombat. It is the only thing protecting this realm from annihilation."

"But we all know," said Kung Lao, "and you've just reaffirmed, Raiden, that Mortal Kombat was only supposed to happen once a generation. I think Subby's right: If we fight more often, aren't we just opening ourselves to more opportunities to lose?"

"The tournament evens our odds," said Liu Kang. "We can't take on armies by ourselves. If we want to fight Kahn, we have to do it via the tournament, like we did to avenge our temples in the last tournament."

"The last tournament," spat Ching, "was a ruse to get a proper blood sacrifice to bring back _that_!" She pointed at Sindel. "Who's to say another tournament wouldn't be stacked in their favor again?"

"But without Mortal Kombat," argued Liu Kang, "we have forfeited our realm and our lives."

"I'm not saying we refuse to represent our realm in Mortal Kombat," said Yuan. "I'm saying we've already done our turn and saved our world from that attack for our generation. We shouldn't make ourselves vulnerable in that way again, and they can't make us—it's against the rules, even _their_ rules. We need pick to our attack this time."

"But if we all die in a frontal assault," Sonya said, "there won't be anyone to fight in Mortal Kombat when Kahn comes to take the realm."

"With Sindel here, there doesn't have to be a tournament for Kahn to get in," said Ching. "That's why she's here. And if he doesn't need a tournament, why would he agree to one? We've been rather good at winning those lately."

"Either way this happens," Yuan said, "there will be no Mortal Kombat. So we either roll over and die or we fight and maybe die, but maybe win. Maybe it's only because I _can_ do math, but it seems like a no-brainer to me."

This was not as motivational as Yuan had hoped. Most of them didn't meet his gaze, looking slightly guilty.

"Are we going to wait up for those ninjas to get back?" Chat asked with a yawn.

Yuan sighed, overwhelmed by frustration. "I am. But if you can sleep, feel free." He turned around and leaned heavily against the cabinets.

* * *

Sorceress Ennir dropped the stone lid back over her scurf jar with a sigh. "Yes, that's it."

Rain, who had been inspecting the cloning apparatus, turned to her with a bewildered expression about his eyes. "I'm sorry?"

"I'm going to call him Ermac," she explained. "I've just decided."

"Ermac?" asked Rain, looking no less bewildered. "Isn't that Edenian for mistake?"

"It's a hard decision to name a person you're bringing into the world," Ennir said, working the scurf into the tar she'd prepared with a wooden spoon. "Normally I don't bother, but he'll probably want something besides Number Two."

"Number Two?"

"Well, it's not set yet," Ennir said with a wink, "but I'm sure he'll be accepted."

"I don't understand," said Rain. "Is this some sort of code? Number Two?"

"Code?" asked Ennir. "No, the Numbers aren't a code. They're an honor."

"It doesn't mean anything?"

"Of course it means something." Ennir laughed. "Even honors mean something."

"Then please, enlighten me." Rain knelt beside her attentively.

Ennir paused her stirring. "I can't. It's a secret."

"I won't tell anyone."

"Don't you understand, dear Rain, that there may be things out there whose very existences depend upon secrets?"

Rain didn't answer her immediately. Ennir inspected her mixture. It was looking oatmeal-like, and she returned to it with zeal.

"Do these Numbers refer to things you've made?"

"No," Ennir huffed. "Well, not all of them."

"But others of the Numbers are yours?"

"Just the one," Ennir said, laying down her spoon. "It will be two after this one," she continued, "and if I have my way, I'll add another soul I've had some hand in shaping." She reached out and patted Rain's cheek.

"You mean me," he said, standing and taking her hand.

"Your spot is currently taken, which is a bother, but its possessor and I have an understanding." Ennir pulled her hand back from Rain and began to knead the goop in her wide stone bowl. "He's just as eager to be rid of it as I am for you to have it," she clarified, looking back up at Rain.

"That's good," he answered, with the hint of a smile in his eyes. "Then I won't have to hunt down this person and kill him to take it."

"Well," she said, "it wouldn't be fair for him to be murdered again. And you'd have a hell of a time hunting him."

"Which Number is it?"

"Don't be so impatient. You'll find out when you get it."

"When will that be?"

"Don't be impatient," she reiterated more slowly. "Just let us conquer Earth, and I'll make sure you get your honors. Now," she said, hopping off her stool, "are you ready to witness creation?"

At Rain's solemn nod, Ennir scooped a glob of the goop out of her basin and lobbed it at the feet of the man inside the cloning chamber, who was suspended, lifeless, by a metal band around his waist. The goop stuck to the floor between his feet without touching either of them, and Ennir smiled, self-satisfied. "Light a match, will you, Rain?"

He searched her table and, finding the box, slid out a match and struck it firmly. Ennir gingerly took it from him and tossed it at the goop, eagerly following the arc of the match and anticipating contact.

The match hit its mark. The goop went up in a flash and burned out just as quickly. It would have left a scorch mark on the floor of the cloning chamber if there hadn't been an impressive mark there already. The clone jerked limply and continuously. Ennir watched placidly, waiting for the process to complete itself. It was taking longer than usual, but she had expected that. The jerking became stiffer as the clone's mind took control of his muscles and began to tense them.

Eventually, the jerking stopped. The clone rolled his head from side to side a few times, then stilled. His eyes opened slowly, the lids falling back toward each other several times before the process was complete. Ennir rose up onto her tiptoes and craned her neck, trying to work her way into his field of vision.

"Yes, that's right," she said, when his eyes finally flicked to her face. "Welcome back to the world."

* * *

The medical tent of the nomad camp was beside Djurash's tent and much larger. It was also less stuffy, as it had flaps on either end, which the nomads kept cracked open to facilitate a breeze. Through the crack nearer Djurash's tent, Kitana had a decent view of its entrance and the clearing in front of it where nomad soldiers still milled. She had seen Tanya enter the tent, following Djurash and closely followed by the captain. Only the captain had emerged, and only briefly, to give an order to one of his men. Kitana guessed the order was to fetch a coach, as one had arrived a short time later, and she thought the same soldier had hopped out when it stopped. The captain had gone back into the tent immediately after issuing the order, and nothing had since come out except a particularly shrill shriek.

Kitana had slipped out of Djurash's tent and made her way to the medical tent when the captain and Djurash went out to speak to Tanya. They had first pried one of the stakes anchoring the back of the tent out of the ground—not an easy feat from the inside of the tent, but they had rudely rejected her offer to use her telekinetic powers to help. They had then promised to distract Tanya while Kitana wriggled out the back of the tent, directing her to head for the next tent over. There was nowhere to hide, no way to sneak around in the bright, empty desert, so Kitana could only assume the nomads had been plenty distracting. Tanya hadn't glanced toward her, and Kitana had been relieved to discover the purpose of the tent to which they'd sent her. She hadn't changed the bandages on her stomach wound since first applying them in a back alley in the capital city. The medics had even provided her with a light cotton tunic and trousers to replace her rough robe, which had smelled like mildew and which she had decided had once been used to transport grain.

The medic attending to Kitana washed the thin cut on her stomach with some sort of antiseptic, and Kitana hissed through her teeth but didn't take her eyes off the entrance to Djurash's tent. It had occurred to her when she heard the shriek that sending her to the medical tent may not have been a mercy—the medics were clearly trained to be even more stubborn than the most delusionally macho of the soldiers. They had even tried to thwart her efforts to swivel in place to see what was going on more clearly. Whatever the captain and Djurash had planned for Tanya, Kitana couldn't do anything to stop it without an out-and-out fight, she suspected, and certainly not without drawing so much attention to herself that they'd have to keep Tanya captive so she couldn't reveal Kitana's whereabouts. But of course the nomads wouldn't keep Tanya captive—they'd just cut off her head and send it back like they had always intended.

The stinging on her stomach faded as the medic finished cleaning the wound and began to apply bandages, but Kitana still clenched her teeth.

Suddenly, Tanya stumbled out of the tent, the flap sliding heavily across her head and knocking papers off the enormous stack resting precariously in both arms. Papers fluttered around her, some wafting back into the tent, others catching the wind and tumbling across the sand away from her. The captain and Djurash followed Tanya out, Djurash setting a few sheets back on the top of Tanya's pile, presumably those that had landed in the tent. The captain waved some men over to gather papers. Djurash bent to help pick them up and—deliberately, Kitana thought—bumped into Tanya, knocking her off balance and the entire pile out of her arms.

Tanya stamped her foot on the ground, then wiped her hands across her eyes as if wiping away tears. It was then that Kitana noticed black smudges—ink smudges—all over her dress. It was no wonder Tanya felt emotionally fragile. She turned to accept stacks of paper back into her arms, and Kitana saw a large splotch of ink on the back of her dress, still wet and dribbling down her back.

Kitana laughed once and put her hand on her mouth to stifle the impulse. The medic took a step back and glared at her. Kitana straightened her torso, allowing the medic to continue wrapping bandages. She watched the ensuing farce with great amusement as nomad soldiers chased papers that blew off Tanya's stack and deposited them back on the top of the stack only to be blown off again. After a couple of minutes, Djurash became very animated, as if he had just had a brilliant idea, and pointed toward the coach, giving Tanya a little pat on the back.

She trudged toward the coach, leaning back so the stack of papers rested against her and hobbling across the sand on thin high heels. As she walked, papers continued to blow off the stack, and soldiers continued to chase them and bring them back. When she reached the coach, she threw the papers in first, then rushed to climb in herself. Her foot slipped, but the captain was there to give her a shove on the bottom so she landed on her knees in the coach on top of a mess of papers. Djurash handed her the last stack of escapees then gave her a big, exaggerated wave. Tanya slammed the coach door shut.

As the coach departed, Djurash and the captain turned to each other for a moment before walking back toward the tents.

Kitana shook her head, even more glad than usual that she was not Tanya.

"This will heal soon," said the medic attending to her, securing the gauze wrapped around her stomach with pins. The bandaging job was pristine, and Kitana thanked him.

Before long, the captain stepped into the medical tent and wordlessly crooked a finger at her. She slid off the bench, trying not to stretch her stomach, and followed him back to Djurash's tent. It was a wreck, papers strewn everywhere, the rug half folded over, the map hanging crookedly, half off the wall, and a saucer of ink overturned on the desk. Djurash was busy tidying but glared up at them as a draft through the open tent flap stirred the papers on the floor.

"Hey, watch the wind," he grunted.

"What happened?" asked Kitana as the captain sealed the tent behind him.

"Filthy mutants tackled the paperwork," said Djurash.

"Somewhat literally," said the captain, and Kitana caught the flash of another glare from Djurash, who seemed genuinely peeved at having to sort through his papers.

Kitana gaped at them.

"What?" said Djurash. "We couldn't let her leave without suffering some sort of trauma."

"I saw the dress," said Kitana. "Was there anything else?"

"Intimidation," said the captain. "Humiliation."

"We didn't touch her, Princess," said Djurash.

"'Cept I got a good handful there at the end," snickered the captain.

"I heard a shriek," said Kitana.

"She's got lungs, hasn't she?" said the captain.

"_Why_ did she shriek like that?" Kitana crossed her arms.

"That was the first time I splashed her with ink," said Djurash. "I had to use a quill, you know, or they might start suspecting we can learn things." He waved his fingers by his forehead.

"Filthy mutants wrote," said Kitana.

"Be fair," snarled Djurash. "I think quills are specially engineered to put ink wherever you least want it. It's been my theory for some time that it's why females of your kind don't seem to want to earn anything except by lifting their skirts. They might have to use quills. Ink gets everywhere." He showed Kitana a blackened palm.

Kitana decided not to comment on his theory. "If you're being truthful," she said. "I owe you both gratitude for sparing her. Even if you're not being truthful, I still owe you gratitude for sending me to the medical wing. You probably saved me from an infection." She inclined her head.

"We just wanted you out of the way," said the captain. "Med tent's closest."

She sighed. "Then I still owe you gratitude for the distraction."

"We'll accept that one," the captain said with a gravelly chuckle. "It was quite a performance."

Djurash inclined his head to the captain, then said to Kitana, "Of course it wasn't just for you. We also had to distract our men so they wouldn't think too much about why they weren't killing her."

"There wasn't any reason to kill her," said Kitana.

"Not so for them," said the captain. "She's not their friend."

"But she's irrelevant to the war effort," said Kitana. "Killing her wouldn't gain you anything."

"We didn't," said Djurash. "Why are we still arguing over it?"

"She's just trying to save the civilians," said the captain. "Eh, Princess? Of course you're also irrelevant to the war effort. Shouldn't you be saving yourself?"

"I'm a fighter," insisted Kitana.

"One fighter," said Djurash. "With no tactics experience and, let's be honest, no leadership ability. You're cannon fodder. And we've got ten thousand of those. Ten thousand, ten thousand one: they're basically equal."

"But I know the Earth warriors," said Kitana. "If I could just contact them, I could have them arrange some sort of ambush there, and you could arrange your forces so that we have the advantage over Shao Kahn."

"We have never had any intention of invading Earth," said Djurash.

"You haven't?" Kitana felt like she'd had the floor pulled from underneath her.

Djurash shook his head.

"Why are you telling me this?" Kitana asked, feeling a surge of hope as she regained her bearings. "Have you decided to trust me?"

"No," said the captain. "Your friend just put us in a good mood." He laughed.

"Disciplinary crucifixions," said Djurash, and the captain laughed harder. "Disciplinary," Djurash repeated. "When has dying ever taught anyone?"

* * *

Seated at his desk like an ill-fitted bureaucrat, Vendetta glanced up from his papers and back down almost as quickly. After a few seconds, he looked up again.

"I wish you'd stop lurking in the shadows," he said. "And how'd you get through my door?"

"It's a secret," said Noob Saibot.

Vendetta snorted. "You don't think it would be useful to help your ally strengthen his defenses?"

"Are we allies?" asked Noob Saibot. "We won't be if all you do is hide in this room. And we may not be regardless. You haven't told me what you're doing here."

"I _live_ here," said Vendetta. "What are you doing here?"

"That's not an answer," Noob Saibot said. "Do you want me to go back to Shao Kahn with that answer?"

"What do you mean?" Vendetta asked suspiciously.

"You know," said Noob Saibot, "that any gravity elemental on Earth could open a portal to Outworld at any time. The protection is one way only. A common question these days in Outworld is why you, with an entire clan of elemental ninjas, haven't taken it upon yourself to open a path for Kahn. We're afraid you might be too attached to this world."

"This isn't my world," said Vendetta. "And if you knew anything about gravity elementals, you'd know they're too _blasted_ rare to be counted upon. They also need experience—lots of it—before they're able to maintain the portal while something as powerful as Kahn is traversing it. Death by portal is ignominious for anyone, let alone the greatest conqueror the universe has ever known."

"So?"

"So I've only had one!" Vendetta threw his pen onto his desk. "And he died _practicing_ opening portals for mutant troops at the Temple of Light, so don't lecture me about _gravity elementals_." He stared Noob Saibot down for a moment, as if daring him to start. "Did you come all the way here to tell me that?"

"No," said Noob Saibot. "It was just an observation." He stepped over to Vendetta's desk and leaned one hip on it. "I think you misunderstood my initial question," he said. "I'm less interested in what you're doing _here_ than in what you're _doing_ here."

Vendetta glared at him. "Fine," he said. "You want to know what I'm doing?" He swept up the paper he had been studying when Noob Saibot entered the room and flung it at him.

Noob Saibot snatched it out of the air. When he saw what was on it, he felt his mouth twist into a smile beneath his mask. "Nice drawing," he said, handing the paper back. "On Outworld, we would have used more color, perhaps some charcoal for texture."

"It's a schematic," said Vendetta. "I'm making machine-enhanced ninjas." He leaned back in his chair and folded his hands over his stomach. "An army of them."

"So I gathered," said Noob Saibot. "I feel I owe you an apology. Here I thought you were chasing your own cockamamie agenda when you were serving me all along."

"Serving _you_?" growled Vendetta.

"You're a servant; don't forget," said Noob Saibot.

"So are you," said Vendetta, "or so you claimed when you barged into my prison. That makes us equals. And this is _my_ realm."

"No, it isn't," answered Noob Saibot. "And we won't be equals for long."

Vendetta grunted and looked back at the papers on his desk. "How did you get here, anyway?"

"Does it matter?"

"I want to know how to send you back."

Noob Saibot stood. "The correct answer was 'yes, it is important'. Or at least informative. I slipped in with the Earth warriors when they returned from their raid on Outworld."

Vendetta turned his head slightly. "What raid?"

"The one where _that boy_ rescued _that girl_. Didn't Smoke tell you?"

"When was this?" Vendetta demanded.

"About two days ago."

"Two _days_?" Vendetta narrowed his eyes. "What have you been doing for all that time?"

"Just looking around," said Noob Saibot. "I haven't been here for ages, and I mean that literally."

"Two days," Vendetta repeated thoughtfully. "Where was the portal?"

"The cellar of the large mansion on the edge of town," Noob Saibot said nonchalantly. "A young lady held it open—Yen Sa's daughter."

"_She's_ a gravity elemental?" Vendetta seemed on the verge of a rage.

Noob Saibot didn't want to hear it and cut him off. "She was quite scared when we all came through. Turned out someone _else's_ daughter had swung by to kidnap an old ninja."

Vendetta sucked air through his teeth. "Enmity never mentioned this."

"Why wouldn't she?" prodded Noob Saibot. "She can't have failed to notice."

"She couldn't betray me."

Noob Saibot shrugged. "Good is so contagious," he said. "It's like the plague."

"I'll kill her," said Vendetta.


	19. Chapter Eighteen

**Transposition**  
by Nyohah

**Chapter Eighteen**

* * *

"I don't get it," said Sub-Zero when Enmity signaled that the ninjas had moved out of sight and earshot. "Why all the patrols?"

They were crouched behind the tires of a parked car, keeping the body of the car between them and the main road, where the other Lin Kuei had been. Enmity stood slowly, double-checking the road around her for anyone that might be hiding, waiting to ambush them. "They're to keep the populace under control," she answered.

"I'm sorry," said Sub-Zero, also rising from his crouch. "Are we both still talking about Yanxubin?"

"We kidnapped multiple scientists yesterday," Enmity said. "And soon we're going to start automating the young men."

"That last bit," said Sub-Zero as they headed off down the road again, "that might make them restless. But not until it actually happens, and they have to stop pretending it won't. Besides, your door-to-door death squads yesterday will probably keep them properly cowed for a while."

"I didn't kill any ninjas yesterday," said Enmity, slightly annoyed.

"You said you killed the ones who had qualms about Vendetta's big plan. You can't be suggesting that was no one." Sub-Zero shook his head. "Death or automation—I'd choose death."

"No one knows," said Enmity. "They can't have qualms if they don't know."

"Filthy liar," said Sub-Zero. "I suppose now you'll try to tell me they were door-to-door puppy squads."

"They were door-to-door _kidnapping_ squads."

"Oh," said Sub-Zero. He sounded a bit embarrassed but recovered quickly. "Are you sure it counts as kidnapping if you do it so openly? That might just be coercion." He stopped suddenly and turned to look at her. "And what were you doing at my parents' house? Did you actually think _my brother_ would help with the insanity? He's weird and hopeless and a bit daft, but he's not crazy!"

"Don't be stupid," said Enmity. "Father just wanted your family out of the way."

"Yeah?" Sub-Zero grumbled as he turned back around and walked away from her. "Feeling's mutual."

Enmity followed, amazed that he would turn his back to her, all the while claiming he didn't trust her. She supposed it might be that he was letting that Honor creature of his watch her for him, but that would require that he trust the Honor creature, and she hadn't seen evidence of that either.

"No more questions?" she asked. "How many scientists did I kidnap? Did I tell my father you were alive? Did Smoke—?"

Sub-Zero cut her off with a wave of his hand, and they scrambled into hiding, Enmity vaulting onto the flat roof of a shop while Sub-Zero crouched behind the newspaper box in the shop's entryway. They were bad hiding spots, as usual, but there weren't any good hiding spots, and the patrols were watching for villagers, not ninjas, so it didn't really matter whether they hid well anyway. Enmity also had faith that she and Sub-Zero could take any other pair of Lin Kuei and even larger groups as well. A pair probably wouldn't even have time to be surprised, and they certainly wouldn't have time to raise an alarm, since they carried no long-distance communication devices.

That would change if her father got his way.

The Lin Kuei passed, and eventually they faded from the reach of the farthest streetlamp in view. Enmity leapt lightly off the roof.

"_Did_ you tell your father I was alive?" Sub-Zero asked before her feet had hit the ground, startling her.

"Of course," she said, recovering and heading off down the street.

"And yet you decided not to kill me."

"Maybe I was just curious."

"About disobedience?" asked Sub-Zero. "You really missed out on adolescence, didn't you?"

Enmity rolled her eyes. "About you. I think it's my turn to ask a question."

Sub-Zero laughed once. "My life for the past couple of years has been extremely uneventful," he said. "And you probably know everything about it prior to that due to your ceaseless spying, you creepy old quisling."

"What?"

"I'm sorry, I meant creepy old quisling's _daughter_. Ask your question."

Enmity didn't know what to say for a moment, thrown by his outburst and without a clue what a quisling was. "This hell dimension you spoke of," she said finally, "Shang Tsung sent you there?"

"Shang Tsung?" Sub-Zero sounded surprised. "No, I never got close to Shang Tsung. Honor teleported me there."

Enmity was stunned. "He was your target."

"And I was someone else's target. It made things messy."

Enmity stopped walking. "_Messy_," she said. "Messy. You managed _undetected_ that legendary assassination at the Supreme People's Court, but some anarchic tournament was too 'messy'?"

Sub-Zero crossed his arms. "The tournament wasn't all that anarchic. It was well structured, and you had to attend your fights or you automatically forfeited. And you were free to kill your opponent, which made things messy."

"You mean literally messy?" she asked.

"No," he answered, sounding irritated. "I could have held out for eternity conniving ways to avoid Scorpion, but he and I were paired in a match. Winning the tournament was the only way to get close to Shang Tsung. I had no choice but to fight."

"Scorpion?"

"The vengeful spirit that was hunting me. Who would have killed me, if Honor hadn't saved me."

"Honor your magical pet, not some noble quality you possess."

"Right."

Enmity shook her head. "You're saying you actually lost to this spirit?"

Sub-Zero threw her a look. "You're saying you don't buy it?"

"You're a legendary assassin," she said. "If nothing else, that means you know how to cheat to win."

"Cheating takes energy," said Sub-Zero.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Sub-Zero sighed and started walking again. "It means he cared more than I did. That's why he won."

"He cared more about killing you than you cared about living?"

Sub-Zero didn't answer. Enmity considered what he had told her.

"I can't imagine not being afraid of death," she said quietly.

"I never said I wasn't afraid," Sub-Zero answered.

They didn't speak again until they reached Lin Kuei headquarters.

* * *

Even with Lin Kuei patrols to dodge, the walk from Mr. Yen's house to the middle of Yanxubin felt like nothing compared to the long trek around town Sub-Zero had taken the previous day, especially after Enmity stopped trying to talk to him. As they approached the manhole that led into the underground facility, Sub-Zero—keenly aware that any patrols entering or leaving headquarters would have to use that same manhole—focused his efforts on looking for somewhere nearby to hide, somewhere he could monitor the manhole without being easily seen from it.

Enmity must have noticed what he was doing because she pointed to a nearby tree. "Up there," she said.

"You're kidding," he said.

"No," she answered. "I'm going inside to find something else for you to wear."

"You really must be kidding. You expect me to wait in a tree while you fetch me a disguise?"

"You must be kidding," she mimicked. "You expect to walk into Lin Kuei headquarters in your uniform with no mask? If the others don't recognize your face, they'll recognize the color." She wrinkled her nose. "Maybe. You're filthy."

"I've been living in this for the past couple of years," he defended. "And I could be my brother."

"Trust me, Sub-Zero, it's probably worse to be your brother and be caught in headquarters than it is to be you. Besides, he's half your size. No one would think that."

"Look," he said, "I recognize I need a different uniform, but I don't trust you in there by yourself."

"You say this Honor thing carried you between realms in an instant, but it can't carry you across town fast enough to escape inferior ninjas climbing one by one out of a manhole?"

"I'm not saying that," said Sub-Zero. "I'm saying I'd rather die than let it." He cringed automatically, waiting for Honor's protest. It didn't come. Had the thing's metaphorical skin finally thickened?

No. Where was it?

Enmity crossed her arms. "Then send it after me, since you seem to have such faith in its ability to keep me under control."

"It's on your tail all the time," Sub-Zero lied.

Enmity tossed her head and dropped down through the manhole.

Sub-Zero looked at the tree. Turning around, he headed instead for the nearest line of shops. He chose the most rundown shop, guessing it was the least likely to have some sort of electronic alarm. Sidling up next to the door and glancing cautiously over his shoulder, he placed his hand near the lock, gathered the moisture in the air into the lock, and froze it into a bent rod, which he used to hold the lock the millimeters it would turn without the key. Carefully, he started adding ice to the back of the lock, lifting one pin at a time until he heard the telltale click as it aligned correctly. It was a tedious process, and if he made a mistake with any pin, his only option was to let the ice melt and start again. But almost two decades of practice served him well, and after less than a minute, he was able to turn the lock and enter the shop.

He eased the door shut behind him. "Honor," he hissed. "Honor, where are you?"

No answer. He knew the thing could read his mind—it had assumed the appearances of people it had never met but Sub-Zero had—but he guessed it couldn't hear him think from far away. He suddenly felt naked. Honor had followed him everywhere for two years. Granted, for most of that time, following hadn't required moving at all, since Sub-Zero had been confined. But there it was, karma spitting in his face; he'd told the pest to leave him alone, and now that he needed it, it finally had.

Sub-Zero crouched behind the door. It was mostly wooden with a long thin strip of glass in it. This, in turn, was mostly covered in advertisements, but at the bottom, one of the flyers was torn, and Sub-Zero gently folded it up along the tear so he could watch the manhole outside.

=Li Nei Jen!= came a familiar but unexpected mewling in his head, and Sub-Zero jerked and fell backward onto his rear. Maybe that was why he so often felt such hatred for the creature that had saved his life: his finely honed ninja senses protested the unfairness of immaterial beings. Honor could always sneak up on him because Honor could never be seen or heard unless it wanted to be. And it didn't bother simulating footsteps, so it successfully snuck up on him even when it didn't mean to, which was always.

"Where have you been?" he demanded, pulling himself back up into a crouch and not bothering to look where Honor had projected itself.

=We have found Hua Quy Ling!=

"Smoke?"

=He is in operating room,= said Honor, and for once his excitability seemed appropriate.

Sub-Zero swore under his breath, cursing his own shortsightedness as much as Vendetta. "Can you get him out of there?"

=No.=

"What? You can teleport me across realms but you can't teleport him across Yanxubin?"

=No,= Honor repeated.

Sub-Zero stood. "Then teleport me to him!"

Honor didn't answer.

"Honor!" Sub-Zero shouted, turning to see if it had left. It was hovering behind him, an illusion of a white ninja, as usual. "Teleport me to him," he repeated.

=Not safe,= said Honor.

"Don't give me that, Honor," Sub-Zero growled. "We may have to fight our way out anyway."

=Teleporting mass-formed beings is not safe over short distances,= Honor explained sadly. =Your bits are scattered when we take you, and without proper distance, we cannot make you whole again at end.= After a moment, it anticipated Sub-Zero's next demand and added, =If we leave Earth realm we cannot return.=

Sub-Zero exhaled deeply and turned away.

=So we must hurry to lab!= Honor urged.

"No, Honor." Sub-Zero's sarcasm was so thick he could almost feel it oozing from his mouth. "Should we hurry?"

=We must!=

Pure anger rose inside of Sub-Zero, and the urge to vent it on Honor felt like a snake trying to crawl from his throat. He gritted his teeth and sank back into his crouch, staring intently at the manhole. Honor irritated him profoundly, but this emotion, so intense it felt as if he'd inhaled curry powder—this was for Vendetta, and he wouldn't waste it.

Honor didn't speak again, but it seemed to be zipping back and forth restlessly. His back prickled in waves as the creature's energy washed around behind him. Before Sub-Zero became so annoyed he reneged on his earlier decision not to harass Honor, Enmity emerged from the manhole, a black feminine shape with a black bundle in her arms. She headed for the tree. Sub-Zero slipped out of the shop and crept up behind her as she searched the tree for any sign of him.

"Looking for someone?"

She whirled, dropping the bundle and snapping her hands into a guard. Seeing him, she relaxed slightly and bent to pick up the uniform. "Where were you?"

"It's not important," he answered. Then he jerked his head toward the manhole. "Do you have friends coming?"

"Do I have friends?" she asked.

"I guess that's the question." He folded his arms.

"Here's your uniform," she said, pushing it into his chest and backing away.

He caught most of it, but the mask fell to the ground. It was black. "What's this?" he said, picking through the uniform's pieces. "Is this a novice's uniform?"

"Of course. We don't want someone trying to call you by someone else's name."

"Aren't I a little old to be a novice?"

"Think of it this way," said Enmity. "No one will suspect you're you."

"This is insulting," he complained, starting to strip out of his old uniform. "I'm not going to resist because the situation is urgent, but I would like to make it clear for historical records that I protest very strongly, and, again, if things weren't urgent, I would protest very violently."

"I can turn around or something," Enmity said, her hand shielding her eyes.

"Enmity," he said, continuing to change uniforms, "let me make this clear: I care so very little about whether you see me in my underwear that it is probably miraculous. There ought to be a shrine."

"Hurry up," she said, dropping her hand to cross her arms. "Patrols could be coming."

"I'm legendary, you know," he said, not willing to be distracted from the humiliation being forced upon him.

She raised an eyebrow.

"As an assassin," he amended. "I'll let my body speak for itself."

"You were legendary," Enmity said.

"You're taking that away from me?" Sub-Zero asked, incredulous. "I spent my life excelling in my service to the clan, but it's not worth anything?"

"I'm not responsible for this," Enmity protested. "You were legendary once. You were also a prince once; are you going to blame that one on me?"

"No," said Sub-Zero, "I blame my mother for that."

"I'd have blamed Shao Kahn," said Enmity. "I'm sensing a pattern of mislaid blame here."

"You're ignorant," said Sub-Zero, hopping on one foot to keep his balance as he tugged the legging off his foot. He hurried to start pulling the new, cleaner leggings on. It was cold.

"You were killed," said Enmity. "Assassins who die without completing their missions aren't legends."

"Come on," said Sub-Zero. "It was Shang Tsung and the skull-headed hell guy who refused to stay dead. It's not like I went after Archduke Ferdinand."

"It doesn't matter," said Enmity. "You failed. You disappeared. That you're not actually dead doesn't help matters. You're still dead to the Lin Kuei, only now you're a traitor. You're nothing."

"The two are not necessarily equivalent," said Sub-Zero, pulling on his new mask and completing the uniform. "I wouldn't expect you to understand." He stepped over to the manhole and looked down into it. "You lead," he said.

Enmity nodded and jumped into the hole.

* * *

Shao Kahn was sitting on his throne trying not to dwell on how badly things were going for him when Ennir came in with a bottle of wine and two glasses in her hands. She was followed by a tall man in a red ninja's uniform carrying a small wooden table. Kahn's armies were gearing up for an invasion that might not happen because the scheme that was supposed to open the realm for him had stalled. The only person who knew about the failure and could thus help him fix it was dead (and Kahn had never thought he would miss him). He also found himself without an assistant due to the same death. He was under constant supervision by his master—who didn't know about the failure of the scheme and who would probably kill him if he found out—because he had moved his own dais from a private room into Kahn's throne room for more protection following the Earth warriors' raid on the palace. And then a necromancer came striding into his throne room as if she owned the place. Things were not going well.

"What are you doing here?" he growled.

"Now, now, Great Kahn," Ennir said, "be polite." She pointed to a spot on the floor in front of and just to the side of the stairs leading up to Kahn's throne, and the ninja set the table down. Ennir set the wine glasses on the table and filled them.

When she was done, she turned her attention to the Demon Master and curtsied. "I present," she said, waving both arms at the ninja, "Number Two."

"Number Two," Kahn repeated.

"Yes, Kahn," said Ennir, almost like a nagging mother. "You are preparing for probably the greatest invasion of your career. You need an assistant."

"Is this some other pretty officer you've stolen from my army, Ennir?"

"Please, don't insult me, Great Kahn," she said. "I made him especially for the purpose."

"You made him."

"Especially."

Kahn frowned. "You fill the ranks with those indebted to you. You take more power than is your right."

"I am bolstering our much depleted ranks in a time of great need," Ennir said. "Don't accuse me."

Kahn rested his elbow on the arm of his throne and his chin on his fist. "Well? What is he?"

Ennir took a glass of wine from the table. "Let's consider our history," said Ennir. "Almost a quarter of a century ago, what happened?"

"A string of victories."

"Which were?"

Kahn grunted. "The twin planets of the Centaurions and the Shokans. Mandalore. Edenia. Of what relevance is this?"

"You don't enjoy remembering your victories, Great Kahn?"

"Tell us what you have made, Ennir," said Kahn. "Don't try our master's patience."

"He has patience," Ennir said. "Do you?"

Kahn's clenched his jaw. "I can wait when I must."

"Answer another question, then. Why did you achieve such a string of victories?"

Kahn sneered. "The Mandalorians were out of the way."

"Not all the Mandalorians," said Ennir.

"Most of the army."

"And?"

"And?"

"Come on, Kahn, I know you know the answer. Why the obstinance? Was the average Mandalorian such a terrible threat?"

"The average Mandalorian had the possibility to be a threat," Kahn said. "Surely you realize this, given your ancient campaign to exterminate them."

"Humor me," said Ennir with a flourish. "What marks the difference between a threatening Mandalorian and a non-threatening Mandalorian?"

"The ability to use their elemental powers, of course," said Kahn.

"And twenty-five years ago?"

"Most of them could not."

"This was thanks, of course, to the original Number Three, and his successful confinement of the skill to his own servants, the Lin Kuei." Ennir raised her glass in a toast but didn't drink.

"If he hadn't been killed, I'd have taken the twin planets sooner," Kahn said.

"Yes," Ennir said, "because who wouldn't have existed to thwart you?"

Kahn grimaced. "The Mandalorian Honor Guard."

"The Queen's Honor Guard," repeated Ennir triumphantly. "You could have saved us a lot of time by spitting out that answer sooner."

"I don't like to think of them," Kahn said, shifting to lean back in his throne. "They put me in a foul mood. Almost as quickly as necromancers."

"Or Liu Kang?" Ennir asked innocently.

Kahn bared his teeth at her.

Ennir was unfazed. "What changed twenty-five years ago?"

Kahn's mood improved slightly at the thought. "Shang Tsung sent them on a spirit chase in another galaxy."

"Yes," said Ennir. "He did have good ideas, about once a millennium. Pity that one didn't get executed as well as it was supposed to. Then there wouldn't have been any left to come back only to find that their planet was gone."

"And go to Edenia instead," said Kahn.

"Which was next on the list," said Ennir. "But fortunately for us all, eight tired and demoralized Honor Guard members weren't enough to stop your invasion. Perhaps if Number Four hadn't been one of them, and all eight actually tried..."

Kahn snarled at the implication.

Ennir raised her eyebrows.

"Get on with it," Kahn said. "What does this story have to do with this proposed Number Two?"

"Three members of the Queen's Honor Guard died in your invasion of Edenia. Their souls were trapped here in Outworld."

"Yes."

Ennir smiled. "I harvested them."

Kahn raised his chin, still looking at Ennir, then turned his head to look at the ninja. "All three are in that thing?"

Ennir nodded, still smiling.

"Was that wise?" asked Kahn.

"I acknowledge the possibility it wasn't," Ennir said, still too pleased with herself. "I named him Ermac. But it was irresistible. It's such an insult. And if the surviving Honor Guard members find out, I think it will drive them to act rashly. Remember, they owe their lives to one of the souls I harvested."

Kahn stood, turned, and bowed to the Demon Master. "Master," he said. "What opinion do you have?"

*Sorceress Ennir has made you a worthy servant, Shao Kahn,* said the Demon Master from where he lounged. *It will be Number Two.* He turned his head. *How shall I reward your efforts, Ennir?*

"I am content in all ways," Ennir answered sweetly.

Kahn's nostrils flared, but he knew his mask hid his irritation.

The Demon Master looked directly at Kahn. *Kahn, go and prepare your invasion.*

Kahn heard the true meaning behind the words. With an assistant again, he had no more excuses. Kahn turned back to Ennir, visions of defeat and humiliation swirling in his head. She stepped forward to the base of his dais and bowed low. A sheet of paper slipped out of her sleeve and onto the floor in front of her. There was writing on the paper large enough to make out from where he stood. _I have found her,_ it read. _She is with the Mandalorians._

Ennir rose from her bow and directed Number Two to take a glass of wine to Kahn. "I hope," she said, "that the souls within Ermac will soon recover enough awareness of their former selves to be able to give you good tactical information about the Mandalorians they used to fight alongside. It should be useful."

Kahn accepted the glass of wine. He and Ennir drank together then set their glasses down almost in unison.

Ennir twitched her fingers as she turned to leave, and the paper crumpled into ash.


	20. Chapter Nineteen

**Transposition**  
by Nyohah

**Chapter Nineteen**

* * *

Sub-Zero had always felt that Lin Kuei headquarters needed more grandeur. Perhaps the years he'd spent toddling around in palaces had trained his subconscious to expect marble and vaulted ceilings. Probably they had. Probably it didn't matter. Jumping down a manhole onto a pile of mud put him in the frame of mind to expect poverty and disease, as if he actually was jumping into the sewer, and he didn't think he was alone in that. Even the fact that the rest of headquarters was bright, metallic, and almost sterile could never quite manage to overcome his initial impulses: watch where you step and try not to touch anything. That this ingrained sense of disgust gave him a tendency toward such behavior had gone a long way toward making him a great assassin. But he didn't think that had ever been the mud pile's purpose.

Enmity was near the decorative door to the left of the mud pile by the time Sub-Zero landed. He hurriedly slipped down the slope, leaving the manhole uncovered, and reached her just as she lifted her arms to apply her powers to the door. He reached around her and slapped her arms back to her sides.

She jerked once, immediately, trying and failing to wrench herself free, then turned her head to glare at him from the corners of her eyes. "There's less of a chance we'll be seen if we go this way."

"But there's a chance," he said, "and if we are seen, we'll look too suspicious. You'd never take a novice that way."

"It's a very slim chance," said Enmity. "And it's faster. Let me go."

"Too risky," said Sub-Zero, releasing her. "I don't want the whole place chasing us."

"Fine," said Enmity. "He's your master." She spun on her heel and headed for the opposite end of the corridor.

Sub-Zero followed closely but lingered to slide the manhole shut. When he had finished, the door was open, and Enmity was walking through it like she owned the place, which was close enough to truth.

Sub-Zero scurried after her. He caught up shortly after the doorway and, glancing around to see if anyone was near, caught her arm.

"What now?" she snarled.

"Smoke," Sub-Zero said. "He's in the lab right now. Honor found him."

Enmity's expression softened slightly. "I understand," she said. "Now follow me, don't touch me, don't talk to me, and _don't fidget_."

Sub-Zero froze, guiltily, in the act of pulling at the sleeve of his borrowed uniform. It was a little tight. "Right," he said. "Lead on."

She did, head held high, ignoring his presence as he tailed her, walking a little to her side. They passed an open practice room where several novices trained under the eye of a full ninja in brown. They also passed two other full ninjas in the hallway, heading toward the exit. Sub-Zero had to dodge out of their way at the last second, remembering too late that he was supposed to be a novice, that a full ninja would never move aside for him. Sub-Zero looked over his shoulder as he jumped back to place beside and behind Enmity, and his eyes met those of one of the ninjas, who was glaring at him over his shoulder. He turned his head away, hoping the action looked humble and contrite to the ninja so he would think nothing more of it.

But mostly, the place was empty, and Sub-Zero and Enmity walked alone through slowly curving metal corridors. Between the excessive patrolling and the hour, it wasn't surprising, but Sub-Zero appreciated it nonetheless. They made good time.

Deep inside headquarters, they came upon a ninja walking briskly toward them, his head bent as though he was focused on his destination. Enmity's light, fragmented shadow edged into the floor before the ninja, and he looked up, realizing they were there. Enmity didn't acknowledge his presence, heading resolutely along her path. Sub-Zero bowed his head respectfully, making way for the ninja.

The ninja stopped in his tracks and slowly raised his arm, pointing a shaking finger at them. Enmity stopped, and Sub-Zero began to circle toward the ninja, raising his arms into a ready guard.

Without warning, the ninja went rigid. Sub-Zero stopped circling, startled, and the ninja fell to the ground, curling around himself as all his muscles contracted. It looked horribly painful, but the ninja didn't cry out or groan. He didn't move at all after hitting the ground, didn't tremble with the strain, didn't breathe. Sub-Zero and Enmity watched in bewilderment until suddenly, a couple minutes after the ninja went rigid, his muscles released, and he sprawled limply on the floor.

=He will live,= mewled Honor.

Sub-Zero, still watching the ninja, saw that his chest indeed rose and fell again. "What did you do?" he asked, and his voice sounded more shocked than he thought he was.

"I didn't do anything," said Enmity.

He held up a hand to quiet her.

=We entered his body, his energy paths,= said Honor. =Left his heart but stopped his lungs.=

"Oh," said Sub-Zero, impressed. "Thanks."

"What's going on?" asked Enmity.

"Honor choked him," said Sub-Zero. "Find somewhere to tie him up in case he wakes up too soon."

Enmity spun slowly, looking around, then headed away from Sub-Zero. When she had disappeared around a curve in the corridor, Sub-Zero glanced around, trying to find the waverings in the air that indicated Honor's presence.

It still hovered near the ninja. Sub-Zero took two steps closer to it. "Honor," he said.

=Yes, Li Nei Jen?=

"You can stop people's hearts?"

=We think so,= said Honor. =We have not tried.=

"Oh," said Sub-Zero, a little disappointed.

=We have only asphyxiated evil,= said Honor. =Slow death better.=

"Oh," Sub-Zero said again, his disappointment fading. "Can you find Vendetta?"

Honor made a strange sound. =In time.=

"Great. Honor, find Vendetta and—" Sub-Zero stopped. Enmity had returned with rope. He hesitated. "Find Vendetta and—spy on him. Uh, if he's moving around, try to stay ahead of him and warn us if he gets close to us."

=We understand,= said Honor, and then it was gone.

Sub-Zero grimaced under his mask.

"You don't think we might need its help again?" said Enmity.

Sub-Zero crossed his arms. "We never _needed_ it."

Enmity shook her head but dropped the subject. "There's a vacant room on the way. Let's go."

She grabbed the ninja's ankles. Sub-Zero grabbed the ninja's arms. The room wasn't very far, a cramped metal box without even a light. They had to bend the ninja to fit him on the floor. Sub-Zero held the door open a crack as Enmity knelt beside the ninja and tied him up. Most of her work was in the dark, but a narrow band of light shone on the ninja's face.

"I think I recognize this guy," said Sub-Zero.

"Oh?" asked Enmity. "You knew him?"

"I guess," he answered. "I still don't see how he recognized me in this thing."

"It must not be as mind-blowing to see you in novice gear as you seem to think it ought to be." Enmity tightened one last knot then rose.

Sub-Zero slowly pushed the door open enough to look outside. "All clear," he said.

Enmity nodded and brushed her hands off on her pants.

"Is the lab far?" asked Sub-Zero.

"No," said Enmity. "We'll be there soon."

Sub-Zero nodded slowly to himself and let her once more take the lead. He tried to estimate how long they had been traveling through Lin Kuei headquarters, but he had no watch. Once, he would have known, at the very least, how near it was to dawn. Assassins had to know these things. But all the empty months he had spent with Honor had dulled his sense of time, not the least because days there had been of a different length. The exact time wasn't really important, though. He had no idea how long it would take the scientists to operate on Smoke. He only knew he had a terrible feeling that time was running out, burying his usefulness beneath it like he was trapped in the bottom of an hourglass. He wanted to lead, to hurry, to _run_.

But he had no idea where the lab was. As far as he knew, Lin Kuei headquarters didn't _have_ a lab.

Enmity stopped suddenly, and waved her hand across a door, flames crackling briefly in its wake. The door slid open, revealing a tight spiral staircase. She started down.

Sub-Zero hadn't known Lin Kuei headquarters had more than one level and wasted a moment in surprise at the top of the stairs before starting down. They were too steep and too narrow to be comfortable, and confident as he was in his physical abilities, they seemed treacherous enough that he couldn't stop himself from grabbing the railing. Enmity trotted down them, her hands behind her back. Sub-Zero tried to keep up.

"I didn't know there was another level," he whispered.

"Father keeps prisoners down here," she answered.

"And a lab?"

"Only recently."

They emerged from the stairwell into a corridor narrower than the one above them. Doors appeared along the walls at small, regular intervals. After about ten of them, another corridor crossed their way. Enmity turned to the left, and Sub-Zero followed her through a thick metal door frame, ducking to fit through. Immediately to their right was a long wall broken by a single door. Immediately to the left of the door was a guard.

The guard looked toward them, raised his arm, and pointed, almost exactly as the other had done.

Sub-Zero cursed. He and Enmity took steps in the opposite direction, instinctively trying to cut off the guard's possible escape routes without opening enough of a gap between them to give him another one.

The ninja took a hesitant step toward them, raising his fists, then stammered, "I-it's her!"

Sub-Zero and Enmity were both startled enough to glance toward each other.

The ninja got his voice back, turned toward the door, and shouted, "Run! She's here! Run! For your lives!"

Sub-Zero thrust his arms forward, feeling the cold swirl around them instinctively. The ice blast hit the ninja in the back, and he froze instantly.

Enmity took a step forward and ran a hand along his cheek to the back of his head. Her other arm came up, toward his chin.

Sub-Zero grabbed her wrist. "Don't kill him."

Enmity snapped her head toward him. "You exposed yourself. You think he won't realize he was frozen?"

"When Vendetta finds out Smoke's gone, he's going to have a pretty good idea who to suspect anyway," Sub-Zero said. "It's not going to matter."

"Have it your way," she said, stepping away. "It's your skin. How long will he stay frozen?"

"Long enough," said Sub-Zero, counting the seconds. Enmity turned toward the door, took a step forward, and his internal timer ran out. The ninja thawed as suddenly as he had frozen but didn't even have time to be confused before Sub-Zero's punch hit him in the jaw from the side, snapping his head around and knocking his body toward the wall. His head hit the wall on the way down, but he was already unconscious.

Enmity turned around at the sound, saw the fallen ninja, and placed one hand on her hip.

"I took care of it," said Sub-Zero. "Now get out of my way." He pushed past her and through the doorway.

What he saw froze him there. Enmity pushed at his back, trying to get through. Soon she stopped, too. They stared together.

On one stretcher lay a body, a man. From where he stood, Sub-Zero couldn't see his face, but he knew. Honor had told him. This was Smoke.

On another stretcher lay a different sort of body, black rubber and gray plastic. It didn't flatten in gravity like a supine human body.

Between the two stretchers were a dozen machines. Those facing the robot blinked manically. Those facing Smoke were blank.

Sub-Zero didn't move. There was no reason to hurry.

"They were in the middle of the procedure," said Enmity, sounding horror-stricken. "That ninja warned away the scientists."

"Smart man," said Sub-Zero. "I'd have killed them."

"Is—" Enmity stopped for a moment. "Is there something we can do?"

Sub-Zero knew the answer, but he had to check. He circled around slowly, fighting the desperate urge to turn away, not to look at the atrocity that had become of the man who had taught him, who had been more of a parent to him than his real parents. When he reached the end of the stretcher where Smoke's head rested, he stopped, his hand coming up to his nose to fight the nausea.

Smoke's skin was gray, bloodless. The top of his skull had been sawed away. The brain was missing. Sub-Zero had killed a lot of people—on occasion quite gruesomely—but the sight of the hollow cavity in his former teacher's head almost overwhelmed him. He gagged and closed his eyes.

"Is it...alive?" asked Enmity.

Had Sub-Zero felt safe opening his mouth, he'd have shouted at her for being so callous and so stupid. His hesitance gave him a moment to consider, and he opened his eyes, carefully avoiding looking at the body, to see what she was talking about.

Enmity had walked the circle in the opposite direction, ending near the head of the robot. She leaned over it, staring into blank black lenses meant to be eyes.

Sub-Zero joined her, standing over the robot. The plastic plate for the chest was not attached, lying to the side on a table by the machines with various other bits of machinery and electronics. Several cables and wires were strung from the robot's chest cavity to the machines. "It's not finished," he said. "Look."

"I know it's not finished," answered Enmity. "_Is it alive_?"

Sub-Zero looked at the machines. One of them showed several green lines on a black screen. The lines jiggled over time like lines on a seismograph. He looked back at the robot. It was still, cold, to all appearances lifeless. But he had visited his brother in enough hospitals to know what the lines meant. He reached around the machine showing them until he found the wire that trailed back to the robot's chest cavity. He gently pulled that one away from the wires. "Enmity," he said, reaching for her hand. "Here."

She took the wire in one fist, looking at him questioningly.

He didn't feel like answering questions. He walked around the stretcher until the cables connecting the robot were between him and Enmity. Here was an electrical cable. He pulled it out of the robot's chest until it snapped, sparking once. Here was a plastic tube. He ripped it out, and dark blood spilled into the cavity. The severed cable slipped onto the floor, pumping blood all the way. Here was another plastic tube, this one filled with a clear liquid and hanging from a plastic bag. He pulled it out, too, but the liquid from this one only dripped. Here were more electrical cables, several sets of them in flat ribbons. They didn't spark when snapped.

Only one cable remained intact, and it ran through Enmity's fist. Sub-Zero looked back at the lines. They were flat. He took a deep breath.

"He's dead now," he said.

"He's been dead for a while," Enmity answered quietly.

Sub-Zero took the cable she was holding and jerked it out of the robot's chest. He took a step back, away from Enmity, and almost slipped in the blood pooling on the floor. The machine that had been pumping it began to wheeze, and the flow of blood from the tube slowed.

"We need to get out of here before they come after us," said Enmity. "They know we're here."

"And they know you're a turncoat," said Sub-Zero. "I don't suppose you know a back way."

Enmity shook her head. "There is no back way."

Sub-Zero took another step away from the robot. "Great."

* * *

Tanya took the steps leading to the formal entrance of Shao Kahn's palace as quickly as she could. Three servants trailed her, carrying stacks of paper. At the top of the steps, the Shokan guards recognized her and began to open the huge, iron-reinforced wooden doors.

"Hurry up!" she screeched and slipped through the doors as soon as they were open wide enough.

They opened into a large stone hallway bordering the arena. She heard a low chanting floating out of the arena but ignored it. The quarters Tanya shared with Rain were almost on the opposite side of the palace—near the south tower, where that hag witch lived. Tanya ran as fast as she could in her heels, desperately hoping Rain was home for the evening.

"Mistress," called one of the servants behind her, "please slow down."

She ignored him, but she was out of breath before she was halfway there. Still she kept running, and when she arrived, she knocked with one hand while digging the key out of her cleavage with the other and fumbling it into the lock, just knowing that any second Rain would fling the door open and sweep her into his arms.

He didn't. She pushed the door inward, and their quarters were dark and empty, as messy as she had left them, with rejected dress choices strewn around the floor.

Rain usually cleared that stuff up for her. Her heart skipped into her throat, and she almost choked on her panic. Then she remembered the chanting and ran back for the arena. That had to have been the Shadow Priests, massed in the arena, receiving orders from Rain. They were preparing for the invasion, after all, and Rain probably hadn't slept since she left. She wanted nothing more than to take him to bed with her and ensure he got some real sleep.

She arrived, finally, back at the arena and motioned for the servants to stop. They collapsed against the walls, gasping for breath. Her breath was ragged in her throat and sweat ran down her face like it had in the desert, but she could hear the Shadow Priests more clearly, and as she stepped through one of the many doors to the balcony overlooking the arena, she saw them arrayed there, gently bobbing in the air, each out of sync with the others around him, the movement giving the illusion of the gentle roll of waves. Tanya smiled.

The smile slipped from her face as she scanned the arena and saw Rain was not there. She started to count the Shadow Priests—it was possible Rain was fetching the rest of the them so he could give them orders all at once—but realized she didn't know how many there were in the palace.

She left the arena and snapped, "come on," at the servants as she jogged for the nearest stairwell. The Shadow Priests had a large room on the second floor where they congregated when they weren't on duty. She supposed they had to sleep or rest or meditate or hibernate or something. She didn't like to go there because the Shadow Priests gave her the creeps, but she knew Rain sometimes did.

The servants seemed to realize where she was going before she got there because they hung back nervously. Tanya glared at them and stepped up to the door. She opened it just a crack, praying it wouldn't creak and peeked inside. It was dark. She didn't know—and didn't want to know—everything Rain had to do with the Shadow Priests, but she knew even he wouldn't be caught in the dark with them. She closed the door and hastily moved away, trying not to make any noise.

Only one servant was left in view, and he was holding open a door. She walked over to him to scold him and saw that the room he was in was another stairwell. The other two servants were huddled inside. She wrinkled her nose and almost opened her mouth to yell at them, but remembering the Shadow Priests, she decided it could wait until they were upstairs.

Tanya was stumped. If she couldn't find Rain, the most she could do was to go to their quarters and wait for him there. She took the stairs slowly, trying to catch her breath. She could hear the servants panting behind her as they climbed.

She emerged into a hallway on the third floor and tried to get her bearings. The servants closed the door to the stairwell behind them, but Tanya forgot to scold them. She had found her quarters, and they were roughly where the Shadow Priests' room had been on the lower floor. She had never realized the Shadow Priests lived or dwelled or infested or whatever right underneath her quarters. They could be doing anything right underneath her while she slept. She shuddered and started to walk to her door.

Then she saw Rain in the hallway.

"Rain!" she cried, her exhaustion forgotten as she dashed forward and flung herself at him. He caught her in a tight embrace, her hard bodice forming a barrier between them. She felt her key shift from the impact.

"Tanya," he said.

"Oh, Rain, where were you?" she asked, her voice muffled against his shoulder.

"At home," he said, "waiting for you." He rubbed her shoulders. "Why were you downstairs? Let the servants lead you?"

Tanya's could feel her brow furrow, but she kept her face pressed into Rain's shoulder. Over his shoulder, she saw two Shadow Priests float into a doorway and realized it was the entrance to the south tower.

"Everything went well with the mutants?" Rain asked, holding her at arms' length.

"No," she gasped, allowing her eyes to fill with tears, the Shadow Priests forgotten. "Oh, Rain, it was horrible! They were so rude, and they kicked sand and spilled ink on my dress and sent me back in this splintery old coach without climate charms, and it was driven by one of _them_, and I never thought things could be so awful! I don't know what they did to the coach you sent me, but it had my extra dress, and they're probably using it for underwear!"

Rain hugged her closer and stroked her hair. "Shh," he said. "I know it probably seemed awful, but they're worse than that to people they don't respect."

Tanya sniffed.

"Do these servants have their papers?" Rain asked.

Tanya nodded against his chest.

"Which one?"

"All of them."

Rain let go of her. "All of them?" He stepped over to one of the servants and pulled a few papers off the stack. He glanced at them and then turned back to Tanya, holding sheets out in both hands.

"Tanya, this is nonsense," he said accusingly.

"Rain," Tanya said, hurt, "I just—"

"Never mind, never mind," he said, then sighed. "The timeline is too tight to send someone again, and we'll know their numbers soon enough. We'll just have to hope they followed orders." He shoved the papers back onto the servants' stack. "Burn those," he said, waving his hand, "all of you."

The servants bowed and headed back into the stairwell.

"I don't know what I'll tell Kahn, though," he said, when they had left. He shook his head.

"Rain," Tanya pleaded, "I'm sorry, I—"

"Never mind, Tanya," he interrupted. "It's not your fault." He started to walk past her, toward the palace's main hallway.

Tanya caught his hand in both of hers and backed toward their quarters, tugging at him.

"I'm busy, Tanya," he said irritably, then freed his hand and walked away.

Tanya stood staring at the entrance to the south tower and didn't notice she was trembling until her key wiggled the rest of the way out of her cleavage, slid down the inside of her dress, and clattered onto the floor.


	21. Chapter Twenty

**Transposition**  
by Nyohah

**Chapter Twenty**

* * *

It was after dawn when Yuan looked out Mr. Yen's kitchen window and saw a pair of ninjas running across the lawn. He jumped down from the cabinet where he had been sitting with Ching and glanced around the room.

His mother was seated at the table, his father hovering behind her, on the verge of pacing. Mr. Yen leaned against the refrigerator, staring blankly at the wall, his face set in a frown. Ching's sister Tung and her husband also sat at the table, discussing something quietly in Cantonese. Kung Lao was asleep with his head on the table, Liu Kang brooding behind him, his arms crossed. Everyone else had gone to bed.

"They're back," Yuan said. He leaned over the sink to get a better look. "But they're alone," he continued, glancing back over his shoulder.

Ching craned her neck to see, tense, and Mr. Yen's frown deepened. Liu Kang reached down and shoved Kung Lao's back. Kung Lao jerked and sat up then rubbed his arm across his mouth.

Yuan opened the door and stood back.

His brother swept through the door like a winter gale, pressing forward as though Yuan wasn't there. Yuan scrambled out of the way and took his place beside Ching. Sub-Zero stopped suddenly, surveying the room as though he was about to challenge them all to Mortal Kombat. Enmity practically tiptoed into the kitchen behind him, closing the door gently.

Sub-Zero looked down and ripped off his mask and hood, throwing them to the floor. When he looked back up, his face was stark. He shook his head, his every movement drawn tight; there was an intensity that Yuan had never seen in him before.

Yuan felt his knees turn to jelly as the room seemed to upend itself around him. He would have slid to the floor but a tight grip on his bicep brought him back to control the second after he'd lost it. He turned his head and met Ching's eyes. She looked troubled but centered, and he felt guilty for feeling what she could not feel. After everything that had been taken from her, now he was even stealing her grief for her father, as he had stolen her father.

He reached over with his other hand and met hers where it lay on his arm. Then he turned away. His mother stared with wide eyes at some point beside her older son. His father's hand was on her shoulder, but he looked stricken.

"It's okay, Mom," Yuan gasped, his voice childish.

Sub-Zero stomped to the table, jerked out an empty chair, and threw himself into it.

"What happened?" asked Tung, her voice hoarse, her hand in her husband's.

Sub-Zero didn't answer. His eyebrows squeezed together, and he crossed his arms.

Enmity pulled off her burnt-orange mask and black hood. She let them drop to the floor beside Sub-Zero's. "When we arrived, they had already performed most of the procedure," she said. "Smoke's body was dead."

"His body?" asked Mr. Yen quietly.

"I killed the robot," said Sub-Zero.

"You mean, they successfully transferred—" Mr. Yen stopped and gestured with one hand, swallowing hard.

"The robot was _alive_?" asked Liu Kang.

"I don't feel that what I did was wrong," Sub-Zero said loudly.

No one answered. Yuan covered his mouth and nose with both hands and tried to breathe evenly. Mr. Yen walked to the cabinet by his sink, pulled down a plastic cup, and returned to the refrigerator, filling it with water. He set the cup in front of Sub-Zero. "It's okay," he said.

Sub-Zero's glowering intensified. He wrapped his hands around the cup but didn't drink from it.

"Where's Honor?" asked Yuan's mother, looking at the table and picking at her skirt.

"It's off pretending to be us," said Sub-Zero without looking at her, "running the Lin Kuei in circles."

"They figured out I was a traitor," Enmity said. "I don't know how. I didn't even decide until a few hours ago."

Sub-Zero turned sharply to glare at her, then turned away, rubbing his forehead. "They seemed more alarmed to see her than me, but that could have been the deeply emasculating effect of my trainee's clothes."

"Where did your blue uniform go?" Kung Lao asked.

"It's lying on the street, I guess." Sub-Zero crossed his arms.

"I'll go back and burn it sometime," said Enmity.

Sub-Zero turned and glared at her again.

She crossed her arms. "You're Lin Kuei no longer."

"And for someone who claims to be in the same situation," answered Sub-Zero, turning away, "you're awfully protective of their honor. No, I didn't mean you," he added to the air with a scowl.

Liu Kang, Kung Lao, and Tung and her husband stared at Sub-Zero. He scowled back at them.

"It's okay, Honor," Yuan's mother soothed. "You successfully escaped Lin Kuei headquarters?"

The image of a strangely androgynous ninja dressed in white appeared at the end of the table, nodding in deference to everyone in the room before proceeding to speak in its mewling voice.

=We pretended to be Sub-Zero and Enmity and drew away pursuit while they escaped from ship.=

"Ship?" asked Kung Lao. "What ship?"

"Lin Kuei headquarters is a buried ship," said Yuan's father.

"A ship like a boat?" asked Kung Lao incredulously.

Yuan's father shook his head. "The ship we came here on."

Kung Lao only looked more baffled but didn't press the point.

=Entire ship is alerted to them now,= Honor continued as if it hadn't been interrupted. =No one could get in or out, but they were already out, and guards cannot stop us.=

"I wonder how long until the Lin Kuei figure that out," said Yuan's father.

"Vendetta knows what Vyrenchi can do," Mr. Yen answered, "but he'd never guess one was actually here. It's contrary to every rule we've ever been taught about inter-dimensional—"

"Kill him," Sub-Zero interrupted quietly.

There was a pause. Yuan frowned and let his hands fall.

"I'm sorry, what did you say?" asked Mr. Yen.

"Honor can teleport back to the Lin Kuei base and kill him," said Sub-Zero. "And I say it should."

"That's murder," said Liu Kang, crossing his arms. "I won't stand for it."

"And your opinion means almost nothing here," said Sub-Zero.

Inspector Lau raised a finger. "Are we actually suggesting that this—pardon the pun—honorable creature go and murder someone in cold blood?"

"They've done it before," said Mr. Yen.

"Yes, the Vyrenchi killed my father," said Yuan's mother.

"And mine," said his father.

"And please tell me that's not the same person," said Kung Lao.

"No, no," said Yuan's father. "They were just both evil men and allies. The Vyrenchi came into their private rooms one night and executed them."

"And they deserved it," said Yuan's mother. "The same as Vendetta."

"He is the last of that group, really," said Mr. Yen thoughtfully. "It's because we let him live that he's doing this. Did we think he had been duped, that he was just following orders?" He cupped his chin in his hand. "Maybe it was oversight on the Vyrenchi's part to let him live."

"But we can't really be considering murder ourselves," said Inspector Lau. "I'm an officer of the law, and I couldn't allow it."

"We're planning to kill him anyway, eventually," said Sub-Zero. "This way we don't have to fight, and justice is guaranteed. Honor can't be killed. I'm not sure it can be fought."

"I've dedicated my life to justice," said Tung, "and what you propose is not justice."

"Why not?" asked Sub-Zero.

"Who named you judge, jury, and executioner?" asked Liu Kang.

"Apparently, he did," said Yuan, his anger rising. "He's used to being executioner, and now he's expanded his domain."

"What are you talking about, Yuan?" hissed Sub-Zero.

"Smoke," Yuan bit out, pulling away from Ching. "You just killed him. What gave you the right?"

Sub-Zero stared at him. "He was already dead, brother."

"You said his body was, but not the robot—not his brain." Yuan slapped his hand on the counter. "What are we if not our brains? The robot might have _been_ Smoke."

"He wouldn't have wanted to live like that," said Sub-Zero.

"But you didn't wait to find out, did you?"

"They were only half done," said Sub-Zero. "Machines were connected to everything. I _couldn't_ have brought him back. Did you want me to go find Vendetta and ask him to please let the nice scientists finish the job?" He dropped his head back. "I'm sure Vendetta would have let us all go when they were done because he's a charming fellow who only betrayed his own people and planet and attempted genocide that one time. I'm sure it was just a misunderstanding."

"That's not the point," Yuan said. He took a step forward, then felt a firm grip around his wrist. He looked back at Ching, and she shook her head. "Never mind," he sighed and sank back against the counter. "You couldn't have rescued him."

"But you can't make that creature kill for you," said Tung. "It's not right."

"Honor," said Sub-Zero. "Of all the people here, whose orders would you follow?"

=We follow the Lis,= Honor mewled brightly.

"And if one of the Lis asked you to killed Vendetta, would you do it?"

=We would gladly,= said Honor. =But we cannot.=

"What?" snapped Sub-Zero. "I _saw_ you almost a kill a man."

=We are capable of act,= said Honor, =but we cannot make decision alone.=

"Of course," said Mr. Yen, snapping his fingers. "They're a collective consciousness. Since Honor is the only Vyrenchi currently in the realm, he's probably acting autonomously. I'm guessing he can't make big judgments alone, like whether it's justified to murder someone."

"Without the other Vyrenchi," said Yuan's mother, "Honor is sort of like a child."

"No, trust me," said Sub-Zero. "It's like a child when it's with the other Vyrenchi, too."

"So the question's purely academic, then," said Ching. "I guess it's just as well we never asked the man's _daughter_."

Enmity leaned against the wall as though trying to be invisible. "I don't know what I think," she said quietly. "Don't ask me."

"Let's just drop it," Yuan said with a sigh, rubbing his hands down his face.

"Let's _not_ just drop it," argued Sub-Zero. "This is important. Vendetta is dangerous."

"Do we really know that?" asked Liu Kang.

"He's making an army of robot ninjas," said Sub-Zero. "But you're right: maybe they're for the Peace Corps."

"We know Shao Kahn is coming, but do we even know that Vendetta _can_ make these robot ninjas?" asked Liu Kang. "Has he completed one?"

"Listen," said Sub-Zero. "You're a stranger here. Maybe you don't care, but this is our town. These are all that's left of our people, and the Lin Kuei is all that's left of our legacy. If you're content to watch while Vendetta destroys us, fine. I'm not." Sub-Zero sat back. "If you have a problem with that, leave."

"I'm sure we all want to stop Vendetta," said Ching, "but Kahn is gearing up for an invasion, and as soon as he gets his act together, he'll _be_ here. Vendetta's threat isn't global, and it may not be as urgent."

"It's not just the robot ninjas we need to worry about," said Mr. Yen. "Vendetta has Outworld connections. He may be helping them from this end, somehow."

"By making an army of robot ninjas?" asked Yuan, leaning back against the counter and looking up at the ceiling.

"Oh," said Mr. Yen. "Perhaps. If that's the case, though, the invasion can't be as soon as we thought. Building his army—literally building it—will take time."

"If we knew what he was really up to, we could make an informed decision," said Yuan. "But as it is, we have to assume Kahn must be taken care of first."

=We have information,= Honor said suddenly. =Li Nei Jen sent us to spy on Vendetta.=

"What information?" Yuan's father asked irritably, turning to Sub-Zero. "And you failed to mention this, why?"

"I just sent it to get it out of my face." Sub-Zero shrugged. "I wasn't expecting anything useful. Vendetta polishes his boots or something."

"Honor," said Yuan's father, "it was something more interesting than boot polishing?"

The white ninja nodded once, sharply. =We found him in consultation with alien shadow being.=

"The shadow ninja?" asked Yuan, straightening.

"Wait," said Kung Lao, "so that thing was Lin Kuei?"

"Not necessarily," said Mr. Yen. "Like I said, we know now that Vendetta has connections with Outworld."

"What did they talk about?" Yuan's father questioned.

The white ninja vanished, and for a moment, Yuan thought Honor had suddenly left. But then he saw movement where Honor had been, ripples that dissolved into a man made of shadows leaning over a nonexistent desk.

=Tell me about boy,= Honor said in its normal voice, somewhat spoiling the effect.

The shadow ninja disappeared, and a man dressed in a burnt orange Lin Kuei uniform appeared, seated behind the nonexistent desk.

Yuan heard a crack and, like everyone else, looked to its source at the table: the cup in his brother's hand. The water inside had frozen so fast it split the plastic.

Honor continued speaking, undistracted. The burnt orange ninja sneered. =Why? You writing book?=

Flicker. The shadow ninja reappeared. He sat on the nonexistent desk and swung one leg. =We can do so much grander things if we cooperate.=

Flicker. Vendetta crossed his arms. =He is smart, supposedly. He is also weak.=

=In what way?=

=Illness. He is poor ninja, untried assassin. And mediocre fighter.=

The shadow ninja tilted his head. =Oh, really?=

Nothing happened for a few seconds but still Yuan watched, transfixed.

=Was that truth or your artificially deflated opinion?= continued the shadow ninja. =Your silence tells me you are not sure.= The shadow ninja straightened. =You are sure enough to declare your opinion as fact but not sure enough to back it up. What has given you doubts?=

Vendetta had no answer.

The shadow ninja leaned over the desk again. =What did Smoke say?=

Honor finally flickered into Vendetta, sitting at his desk and glaring at where the shadow ninja had been as if he were trying to melt his brain. =He said they had deliberately deceived me about him.=

=How?=

=By encouraging him to act like Rah Cai Yue.=

=The portal maker?=

=Same,= said Vendetta.

The shadow ninja tapped his finger on his cheek. =You had artificially deflated opinion about Rah Cai Yue?=

=It was not deflated opinion; he was dilettante,= dismissed Vendetta.

=Dilettantes cannot make portals while legions of Shadow Priests bend time and space for Shao Kahn,= said the shadow ninja.

Vendetta raised his chin. =You were at Edenia?=

=I am Number Six,= said the shadow ninja, as if that was an explanation. =And I did not underestimate Rah Cai Yue.=

=What's it matter?= asked Vendetta.

The shadow ninja ignored him. =Outworld has failed with girl. You have failed with boy. I think it is time to swap.=

=Swap?= Vendetta jerked his head backward. =That makes no sense.=

=It makes perfect sense,= said the shadow ninja. =She is Number Three; you are Number Four. She is your obligation.=

=I do not know anything about her,= protested Vendetta.

=You have sent her father for automation,= said the shadow ninja. =It is start.=

The shadow ninja flashed to white and straightened. =At this point, Lin Kuei came with news of Sub-Zero and Enmity near lab. We found them and aided them in their escape.=

"That shadow ninja killed Cai Yue," said Yuan's mother.

"It seems so," said Mr. Yen.

"And when Honor decides to join in the killing," said Sub-Zero bitterly, "we'll send it after the shadow ninja, too. I'm sure there's nothing it would like more than to avenge for you, Mother."

=Nothing,= said Honor.

"But you won't," said Sub-Zero.

=Cannot,= said Honor.

"Then what use are you?" Sub-Zero growled, laying his head in his arms.

* * *

"What a mess," said Noob Saibot, stepping gingerly around the congealing blood on the floor of the Lin Kuei lab. "We're going to have to come up with better security arrangements if this project is going to get anywhere."

"We haven't captured any more of the Lis' friends," Vendetta answered, glowering at the broken robot on the stretcher in front of them. "Things won't go so badly again."

Noob Saibot narrowed his eyes. "And that boy who's next on your list, he doesn't have any friends among your ninjas who might feel the need to go—oh, is _kamikaze_ the word—to try to save him from this ignoble death?"

"It is not ignoble to die for the clan," said Vendetta. "And most of them don't know yet."

"The scientists know. The guard must know. The other ninjas will find out—fast." Noob Saibot aimed a finger at Vendetta. "You have a real information security issue here."

"My Lin Kuei will obey me."

"As I understand it," Noob Saibot countered, "the two most notorious of your ninjas have rather dramatically _not_ obeyed you. It's a nasty precedent."

Vendetta crossed his arms. "I have my ninjas under control."

"Do you?" asked Noob Saibot. "What you're doing here is extremely important. You need to step up production of these robots and you need to make sure that no more setbacks like this happen."

Vendetta turned his glare on the shadow ninja. "I advise you to stay out of Lin Kuei affairs."

"This is no longer just Lin Kuei affairs," Noob Saibot said. "You've been left alone to lord over your kingdom long enough. Now it's time for you to give back to the ones who gave you your power."

"You're right," answered Vendetta. "This _is_ my kingdom. You don't belong here, and I won't let you interfere."

"I belong here more than you do."

"Then what are you?" Vendetta demanded. "Either you come clean or I'll throw you out."

Noob Saibot hopped onto the stretcher next to the robot. "Once upon a time, there was a great assassin, a hero among his clan. He even successfully assassinated a ninja in a rival Japanese clan. But that dead ninja came back from hell to seek his vengeance. And when the great assassin was sent to the Mortal Kombat tournament, the dead ninja followed him. Their fight gave him the chance he had always been waiting for and, well, bad day for the great assassin."

Noob Saibot stretched his back. "But our story doesn't end there. The great assassin fell in with some powerful types in the hell in which he found himself, and just when things were stirring for a fight, he was sent back to once again be great, albeit...different." Noob Saibot paused. "So you see, _I_ am Sub-Zero."

Vendetta looked shocked. "Is it true?"

"No, stupid," said Noob Saibot. "Sub-Zero was just here, remember?" He spread his arms. "This is his handiwork."

"That's it," growled Vendetta, stabbing a finger toward Noob Saibot. "You're gone."

Noob Saibot stood up. "You don't want to do that."

"I rather think I do."

"And I rather think you'd be unhappy with the consequences my master would devise for you if you did."

Vendetta snorted. "I'm not afraid of Shang Tsung."

"Shang Tsung is dead. Your former queen took care of that." Noob Saibot drew a hand across his neck. "Remind me to send her my compliments." He crossed his arms. "No, my master—or shall I say _mistress_—is considerably better-looking than that old amateur and, unlike the amazing mincing miser, actually knows a thing or two about loyalty."

Vendetta swallowed. "The sorceress is back?"

"Oh, yes," said Noob Saibot. "And you know how she hates your kind."

"How?"

"I don't know; I was here, not there, when it happened." Noob Saibot put a hand to his stomach. "But I felt it. I could feel her anywhere."

Vendetta placed the palms of his hands on the stretcher and leaned against it.

"Now," said Noob Saibot, "shall we talk about security arrangements?"

* * *

"I don't get it," said Kung Lao, running his hand up his forehead and through the front of his hair. "Why did Vendetta and that shadow ninja talk about numbers? Were they talking in code?"

"Some of the Demon Master's servants are given numbers as titles," said Ching, "the ones who interact with him directly. I was Number Three."

"They were talking about _us_," said Yuan, not quite believing it. "They've been deliberately messing with us."

"The shadow ninja said he was Number Six," said Kung Lao. "And he called Vendetta Number Four. You're Number Three."

"Shao Kahn is Number One," said Ching. "Shang Tsung was Number Two. Chat was Number Seven. Back when I was in the Demon Master's employ, he had several intelligent servants he called Number Eight and one near-beast of a man that was Number Nine."

"What does it mean, though?" asked Liu Kang.

"I don't think the numbers mean anything," said Ching. "They might be a hierarchy."

"But the shadow ninja said you, Number Three, were the responsibility of Vendetta, Number Four. If it was a hierarchy, wouldn't it be the other way around?"

"Not if, as someone below me, he's supposed to protect the role of Number Three, which I've pretty well abandoned," Ching said.

"But the shadow ninja said he was at Edenia _because_ he was Number Six," said Kung Lao. "That makes no sense unless there's some other meaning."

"I don't think that's important right now," said Yuan's father. He looked at Ching and Yuan. "What we know is that they're after you two. Specifically. But we've always sort of known that—"

"I'm sorry," said Ching, putting her hands on her cheeks and shaking her head. "What?"

Yuan knew exactly how she felt.

"There were prophecies," said Yuan's father, waving his hand. "What's important right now—"

"Prophecies?" asked Ching.

"And we thought they pertained to you, and we tried to keep you safe," said Yuan's father.

"And didn't do a very good job," added Mr. Yen, half under his breath.

"Yeah, no kidding," said Yuan.

"But we _don't_ know what they plan to do with you," said Yuan's father, "or what it has to do—if anything—with Kahn's invasion."

"I'm sure Kahn would like us out of the way for that," Yuan said. "But he'd like everyone here out of the way."

"I can't help thinking there's something bigger going on here," said Mr. Yen, putting a hand to his forehead. "Beyond the invasion and Vendetta's schemes. Something involving these Numbers and Ching and Yuan."

"Yes," said Kung Lao. "Their long-term plans."

"If we knew what they were," said Yuan, "we could figure out how to really hurt them."

"I know how to really hurt them," said Ching, crossing her arms. "We kill the Demon Master. For good." She sighed. "I just don't know how to do it. He came back from death last time."

"No," said Yuan. "He didn't come back from death. Shao Kahn and Shang Tsung brought him back, and they had to stage a big tournament to do it."

"So you kill the Demon Master again," said Kung Lao, "and we all ignore our invitations to Mortal Kombat?"

"We can't do that," said Liu Kang. "If we forsake Mortal Kombat, we forsake our realm."

"No," said Yuan. "We just have to kill the Demon Master and everyone who could resurrect him and would want to."

"So, we open a portal to Outworld, go there, and kill everyone who works for Kahn or this Demon Master?" asked Kung Lao. "I'm on board."

"That's insane," said Liu Kang. "Kahn has armies."

Yuan's father shrugged. "We've fought armies before. Of course, we could use more time to prepare. And the support of the Lin Kuei as _our_ army."

"We don't have time," said Ching. "Sindel's here, now. The threat is immediate."

"If Sindel is Shao Kahn's key into this realm," said Sub-Zero, "why don't we just throw her back? Forget taking the war to them. Just open a portal and give her a shove. Then we're back to Mortal Kombat, and we've saved the Earth for, what, ten more generations? In the meantime, we defeat Vendetta, turn the Lin Kuei into fluffy puppies of righteousness, and attack at our leisure."

"Throwing Sindel through a portal would be murder," said Yuan's mother. "And she _doesn't_ deserve it."

"I've murdered lots of people," said Sub-Zero. "I'm willing to make her my swan song for a good cause."

Ching blinked. "No. When Sindel goes through that portal, we have to go with her. And there's no way we can hide out there. When Sindel goes, that's the time. That's when we launch our attack on the Demon Master."

"I won't let you leave Yanxubin to be destroyed in the meantime," Sub-Zero said. "Vendetta is a big problem already. Think of the size of that problem when we get back."

"One village is a small price to pay compared to the Earth," said Liu Kang.

"Hey," said Yuan.

"Excuse me?" Yuan's father asked.

Mr. Yen shifted his weight. "We've worked very hard to rebuild our lives here. Don't be callous."

"Do you really think Vendetta will stop with one village?" Sub-Zero asked.

"Look," said Mr. Yen, waving his hands to try to get everyone to calm down, "we're all overlooking something. If we kill all the Demon Master's forces in Outworld, where's our guarantee that Vendetta and this shadow ninja won't resurrect the Demon Master here on Earth?"

"It has to be a double-pronged attack," said Yuan's father, nodding. "Nei Jen is right. Vendetta and his forces should by all rights be taken out first. Timing is forcing us to move on Outworld first. But if we ignore either front, we jeopardize our efforts."

"Then we attack both at once," said Ching. "But I know where I'm going."

"And I'll be with you," said Yuan. "I don't know why they're fixated on us, but the only thing they've consistently tried to do is keep us apart. I say we deny them that goal."

"I say we deny them everything," said Ching.

"War it is," said Mr. Yen.

* * *

Three days after Tanya's visit, Kitana woke early. The rug beneath her, like the sand beneath it, was cool, and she shivered in her light cotton clothing. The sun was not yet shining brightly enough to make the tent's material partially translucent. But it was nowhere near quiet, and that must have been why she woke.

She sat up, listening. There was the clank of metal on metal and shouted orders she could not quite make out, but it did not sound like battle. She also heard creaking, and she spent a moment trying without success to think what it was.

She yawned and rubbed her eyes. The nomads were preparing for war, or at least pretending to prepare for war. It was only natural they practice. She just wished they had decided to practice later in the day.

She lay back on the rug, curling into a ball in an attempt to better retain her body's warmth. The tent wall across from her was blank, and she had no reason to keep her eyes open, not so early in the morning.

The wall was blank? Djurash's tent had no blank walls. The most humble and short-lived spark was probably enough to turn it into an inferno.

Kitana sat up again. The giant map was gone. Djurash's papers were gone, the shelf, the desk, and all the walls swept completely clean. And the creaking was the sound of wooden wheels.

The mutants were breaking camp.

She jumped to her feet and rushed to the tent's entrance, hastily tying back the flap. The campground bustled with nomads taking down tents and packing them onto wooden carts, which were pulled by other nomads. The activity was overwhelming but surprisingly organized and precise. Most of the camp was down already.

The captain saw Kitana standing in the tent's entrance and walked over to her. "Sorry, Princess," he said. "You can't hide here anymore."

"What's going on?" she asked.

"We've been called up," he said. "It's time to fight."

"You're taking orders? From Shao Kahn?"

The captain shrugged. Then, seeing a stack of tent pegs about to fall off a cart, he left her, shouting at those nearest the imminent accident.

Kitana watched the activity helplessly. Tent after tent was taken down so fast it seemed to collapse onto itself in a perfectly folded square, almost like it had a mind of its own that knew just what to do. It wasn't long until Djurash's tent was very nearly the only one left standing.

That wouldn't last long, either. Kitana watched Djurash approach with a small band of nomads.

"Finally awake, are you?" he said.

Kitana nodded, feeling powerless.

"You sleep like the dead."

Kitana shrugged.

"If you keep standing there like an idiot," Djurash said, "we'll just take the tent down around you."

Kitana ducked her head and took a few steps outside of the tent.

"What's the matter? Bite off your tongue?"

Kitana shook her head.

Djurash snorted then turned his attention to the nomads accompanying him. "You should be able to fit the shelves snugly underneath the desk," he told them. "If you can't figure it out, _ask_ for help. Now, get to it. We have a schedule to keep."

He turned and started to walk away.

"Wait!" Kitana shouted, startling herself.

Djurash stopped and turned, cocking his head.

"You said the clan leaders have heard my proposal," she said in a rush. "When do I get my answer?"

"We've given you your answer, Princess," Djurash replied, taking a couple of steps back toward her. "You're irrelevant."

"I don't understand," said Kitana, at last feeling the threat of tears.

"We have orders now," said Djurash, "to march to the palace. When we get there, we will be taken inside the gates and armed and organized for Kahn's planned invasion. And then we are going to attack."

Kitana frowned, but Djurash must have seen that she was going to speak and stopped her with a wave of his hand.

"Not Earth. Kahn. We're going to attack Kahn." He straightened, and Kitana saw a deep pride in him. "We had a homeworld once, too, you know," he said.

"I didn't know," was all Kitana could manage.

"We've been planning this for years," Djurash said softly, almost gently. "For decades. And we have no place for you in our plans." He pulled her fans out of his belt and held them out to her, pointed end first. "But we won't stop you if you decide to follow us."


	22. Interlude: Glissando

**Transposition**  
by Nyohah

Interlude:  
**Glissando**  
Twenty-Seven Years Before MK1

* * *

There was a dead time in the evening of a Mandalorian priest, between dinner and compline, and it killed Rah Cai Yue almost every night. In the past, when he had lived in the palace, he had been given to reading history books whenever he had been bored and unable to find anything mischievous (now disallowed) to distract himself. But since joining the church, his days were occupied almost solely with studying the one book that had previously been the most daring, the most rebellious, the most banned, so when he had these two hours to himself alone in his room, the thought of reading turned his brain to mush. (The bishop had taken away his most interesting books anyway.)

His previous occupation, opera brat, was denounced as sinful. And every day he tried to be a little less sinful. He'd even given up wearing his old brightly colored shirts under his black coat. Besides, if he started warbling, the occupant of one of the rooms next to him was sure to hear him—the walls couldn't have been thinner and still been opaque—and upon hearing the brazen coloratura in Cai Yue's voice would report him to the bishop, who had in three months probably had more serious talks with Cai Yue than he had hoped he would have to in his life.

Previously, Cai Yue had used this free time to practice forms with his short sword, the last selfish purchase of his life before being ordained, with which he _might_ have entertained brief fantasies of stabbing a certain military man. The other priests frowned a bit on the violence inherent in martial arts, but Cai Yue had argued it helped calm him and center him for his meditation, and had gotten away with it until the combination of enthusiasm, tiny rooms, and painfully thin walls had resulted in the tip of his sword sticking into an adjoining room and _maybe_ accidentally severing an image of the Virgin.

His sword had been confiscated. Rah Cai Yue now spent his evenings lying on his bed with his arm over his eyes, sighing fitfully. It was a night like any other when a gentle tapping on the paper-thin walls next to Cai Yue's head alerted him to yet another trial of the holy orders: his sighing was disturbing the priest who lived next to him, who still, despite the overarching theme of the gospel they preached, had not quite forgiven Cai Yue for the icon bisection incident.

Cai Yue sat up, put his feet on the floor, his elbows on his knees, his face in his hands, and stifled a whine. But almost immediately he was smiling under his hands, the perfect idea in his head.

Many were the times that Cai Yue had been envious of Mandalorians with showier powers: fire, light, wind, water, and (though it pained him to admit it these days) lightning. Sure, he could float things and stop himself from falling and force unsuspecting passersby to run into each other, but most of the time the gravitic singularities required for such things were small enough to be unnoticeable—he couldn't show off without really doing damage. But now, stuck voluntarily in a room like a jail cell, Cai Yue was finally glad that he wielded what was, without question, the silent force.

He was fairly sure the other priests did not approve of elemental powers any more than they did martial arts, but what they did not know could not distract them, and within seconds, Cai Yue sat cross-legged on the floor with his eyes closed. There was no question what he would practice. The most difficult, esoteric, coveted, and flashy of all gravitic techniques, and also the only one he had not yet mastered.

The portal.

There was a point in the birth of portal at which it pushed, by necessity of creation, so far into instability that even the creator was usually startled by the force of the reaction. All of Cai Yue's previous portals had failed in that moment, collapsing in on themselves, overloading and fizzling out with a few alarming flickers.

This one bloomed.

And Cai Yue immediately saw his mistake, as it nearly filled his tiny room.

He stood up and pulled himself toward the door with his power. It was slow going. The portal sucked at the air in the room, and Cai Yue's ears popped. The sleeves and tails of his thigh-length, thick black coat flapped in the breeze. He grabbed the door knob and twisted.

Nothing happened. Their rooms were so small that the doors opened outward so they weren't always banging on the beds.

"Oh, oh, oh," Cai Yue said, wishing he hadn't sworn off more useful vocabulary. "I don't even know where you're going." He focused his power on the outside of the door, trying to suck it open. It opened a crack, an inch, and promptly slammed back shut.

The portal was too strong for him. The moment it bloomed, he had lost control over it, and it became its own entity, a mad maelstrom swirling with violent intent.

Cai Yue looked over his shoulder, his hands on the door knob in a death grip. "Go away!" he shouted. His feet slipped backward, and his left shoe was sucked into the unknown.

"I unsummon you! You're dismissed! Stand down! Cease and desist!"

The door knob broke off the door. Cai Yue let out a howl, but probably the portal claimed that as well.

* * *

As nomads went, Clan Sochasko hadn't much to brag about. Less than half their number were warriors, so they counted on the disinterest of their betters to get by. Only three stood watch at any given time, and only two in the evenings. The senior of these was male and asleep, staring straight ahead with his eyes open.

He'd learned that trick in the Emperor's army before escaping the battles in China. He had no real idea where China was—he'd stayed for less than six minutes. His unit confronted a series of strange buildings that housed stranger people. They spoke no language he knew, but they were more than willing to kick a fellow hard enough to knock fangs loose. Especially that monk from the Temple, the tall one with the unusual hat. He'd chipped Baraka's teeth. Last he'd heard, Goro had ripped the monk in half. But that was centuries ago.

No one noticed when Baraka marched right back the way he'd come. He'd face desertion charges if he were caught, but he doubted the Emperor would waste the effort. His Clan had disowned him, and now he waited in the backend of nowhere with the dregs of his people, tolerating them for the chance to restore his honor. Baraka knew it would come. He also knew he would not like the price. At any rate, he was safe for now. There were many more Clans living near the capital city—plenty of other families to break up and hordes more daughters and sons to destroy.

Besides, Kahn's army didn't need him. The Sochasko did. Somebody had to be there, when the time came, to keep Sindel in the ground where she belonged, or at least play dumb long enough to muck up the spell. Of course it had fallen to Baraka. His luck, what there was of it, worked like that.

He was so fully asleep that he paid no mind to the shouting above his head.

The boot in his ribs—now, that was worth his attention. Especially when it had friends that stomped out a hard, rapid-fire rhythm against his bones.

"Cut yer feet off, you keep that up," he snarled, springing to his feet, fully alert.

Female and in his face, eyes almost too round to stick in their sockets, screaming to wake the dead. The Sochasko healer. Couldn't just twist her neck and go back to bed, then.

"Demon!" she shrieked, scrambling to get behind him. "It's rainin' demons!"

"It never rains. Demons, nor nothin' else..." he grumbled. At the same time something in the sand started moving.

"Demon?" the thing—a humanish man—gasped, like an echo, frantic, as it pushed itself up on its hands and knees. "Demon? Where? _Agghk_!" It caught one good look at them and went scuttling backward.

"Well, what's that, then?" the healer spat, disgusted. "Men don't fall from the sky."

"Idiot female," Baraka hissed. "It's just sorcery."

"Yer right!" she snapped, hands waving. "That's so much better! It's only a witch! _We're all saved_."

Baraka grimaced. Girls were such trouble.

And he hated it when they were right.

Meantime, the thing she insisted was a demon had taken advantage of her hysterics to scoot away from them. It put its arms out, and a ball of black appeared between its hands, purple energy flickering across it. A spell of some kind.

Baraka's great, snarling flying tackle put a stop to _that_.

"Let go!" the thing cried, pushing and kicking, trying to wrench its arms free so it could resume its sorcery. "Get off get off get off _let me go_!"

Baraka clinched tighter upon hearing all that Chinese. He knew the sound of fear very well, and he was okay with the language. "How 'bout not?" he asked, dragging his prey vertical with a hard squeeze. "No more witchy tricks outta you."

"I'm not a witch," the thing huffed. "I'm a guy."

At that, the healer hissed and sidled closer, all sly smiles.

"Witch, demon, spirit, all the same," said Baraka gruffly.

"Uh, I'm a priest," the thing corrected him. "Sort of the opposite."

"Really?" That gave Baraka pause. Everyone knew pouncing clergy was bad luck.

"Three months ago next Tuesday," said the thing with a sharp nod. "Look at my coat."

It was a particularly nice coat, long and dark and heavy, of some good, strong material that was nonetheless soft.

"Say," Baraka hummed, stroking the arm of it, "yer right." He grinned despite himself. "Come with us. Hostage priest."

"Hostage?" the priest squeaked. "Look." He twisted in Baraka's grip. "Uh, sir, I just want to go home. I didn't mean to come here, and I'm not going to be a very good hostage."

"..._Sir_." Now, that was funny. It gave him his first real chuckle in weeks. "Yer a chaplain, maybe?" His voice slid from teasing to business as he shifted his grip, pressing steel against the priest's back. "No foolishness. I caught you; yer my hostage; we're going to see her."

"Chaplain?" Some of the color went out of the priest's face. "No, no I'm not." His voice squeaked a little on the last word, and he took a moment to clear his throat before resuming his protests, wriggling. "I'm not military. Have you seen me? What military would take me? I don't need to see this 'her'." He sagged. "I don't know anything."

"I'm tellin' you, once he gets an idea in his head, it's best to let him have his way," the healer chirped, pressing up against the priest. "Even if yer _not_ military."

Baraka scowled. "Shut yer face, female."

She laughed and pushed closer to the priest. "You feel nice," she purred. "And such a lovely red color. So cute!"

The priest closed his eyes. "Fine," he sighed. "Let's get this over with. Just stop touching me."

* * *

Cai Yue was beginning to think the bishop had been right about the risks of iniquity. He'd never been so close to death in his life. And the dangers could only multiply if this were Outworld—and Outworld this must be if there were mutants. Nowhere else ever had them for long. Sometimes they were driven off. More often, wherever they landed _became_ Outworld.

The mutants marched him toward the tents of their camp. He went with as much dignity as he could manage with both arms twisted behind his back. He thought hard, trying to come up with some way out of the mess he'd landed in. He wasn't sure he could even make another portal, but he certainly couldn't with that monster on his back. And he couldn't come up with any other ideas with all the panic filling his brain.

He was alone, and mutants were every bit as scary in person as they were in stories, hungry-looking with big gleaming eyes and bigger—_much_ bigger—gleaming teeth. He had only met two of them, and one of them had a sword at his back, while the other one stared at him with a raw kind of interest he didn't want to overanalyze.

The female sidled up next to him while he walked, feeling the fabric of his coat.

"Where from you are?" she babbled. "Having many brothers?"

Cai Yue tried to shake her hand off, but without arms, it wasn't easy. "Mandalore," he grunted, figuring these were Kahn's armies; they would recognize their enemy soon enough. "And no, none."

"Mandalore..." the female purred, as if tasting the word. "Must be far away." She chuckled. "More's the pity."

Her hand traveled lower, and he convulsed.

"Now, now," the male huffed, furthering the violation of Cai Yue's personal space by breathing on his neck, "our nice hostage asked you to _stop_ that."

If anything, that metal grin of hers spread wider, and her hand traveled lower, and—

Dancing on the sand, Cai Yue yelped, "I'm a priest!" Only by the brute force of the male holding his arms did they not all end up in a pile on the sand, which, after all, may have been what the female was aiming for.

She smirked. "I'm not."

He had to get out of there.

* * *

Baraka had to twist his arm almost inside out to keep from ruining that fine coat and the shrieking, writhing man inside it. He was a right skittish fellow, though the healer definitely didn't seem to mind. She didn't mind Baraka's orders, either. He'd dislocate an elbow if the two of them kept it up.

"Honestly, woman!" he barked, swinging a leg to kick her smart. She hopped out of range with a smirk.

"Pretty," she said again, a little wistful, and unhanded the hostage, still beaming.

They'd reached the end of their journey. Baraka waved the sentries off with as much of a flourish as he could manage while still holding his captive and trying to kick the healer, all without falling over, and in a moment more, they were inside.

Chief did not look happy to see them, still half-tangled in her sleeping rug.

"So." She kicked it aside with drowsy snarl, raking her hair into place with her fingers as she stood. "_What_ exactly did you wake me up f—?"

Then she saw the priest.

"Well," she said slowly, grinning. "Hello, there."

The priest backed away from her, and Baraka had to move fast to keep him from impaling himself.

She barked orders to the guards, who hustled out quick, carefully not looking at anyone, jabbing each other and whispering as they left. Chief shook her head, smirking, knowing those two for chatterjaws as well as Baraka did—the rest of camp would know all about everything, and soon.

Baraka leaned down, muttered, "Tell her," to the healer, and she jumped and whispered in Chief's ear in turn.

"Chief," she added, being sure to use Chinese and speaking just loudly enough to be overheard.

"She says you're a priest." Chief's grin was positively wicked as she twisted the last word. Oh. Great.

"This is true," the priest said slowly. After a moment of staring at her, he said, "Do you, uh, require a blessing?"

"Aren't you sweet? No, no. But priests can read." She looked at him sharply. "You _can_ read, can't you?"

He straightened back up at that, his forehead a bit wrinkled. "Of course."

"Wonderful. Do come closer; I won't bite." She spared a glance at Baraka. "You, too; you're letting the cold in."

"Milady—!" he choked, positive that having a captive priest in her tent with that look on her face was the opposite of a good idea. A man could only see so much and keep his sanity.

"Oh, shut up." Chief was eyeing her new prize. "This one, here." She flicked her gaze at the map and tapped a location at random, smack in its character. "What does it say, there?"

The priest blinked. "Yellow River," he read easily.

"Lovely!" She clapped her hands, then waved them sharply for his release. "An honest priest. We're not killing him, so let go, already."

Baraka relinquished the priest with a grumble.

The priest stretched his arms and straightened his coat before bowing. "Thank you, uh, captain?" he said without rising.

Her husband's rank, once. Chief blinked rapidly and smiled tight. "...That works, I guess. You're most welcome. Please understand, the previous ones weren't being so forthcoming as you."

The priest rose from his bow, looking slightly less rabbity than when he had started it.

"This one's from Mandalore province, Chief," buzzed the healer, grinning as she slithered closer.

"Um, planet. Mandalore planet." His voice trailed off as he finished the word. "Can I go?"

"Yes," Baraka said, "yes, by all means, go ahead and move!" One false step and he'd have a chance at that coat. Spoils were part of his pay, after all.

"Look," Chief barked, catching the priest's sleeve before his escape progressed more than an inch, "he's a priest with astrology talk who came from the sky. He's not going anyplace until I say."

The healer froze in mid-wriggle, sulking. "That's not fair!"

The priest was sulking, too. "I just want to go home," he said to his feet.

"Well." Chief stood very still at that, and her next words were soft. "Some other star? Out there."

"Uh, yes, that's right," he said, lifting his head, sounding surprised at her gentle answer. "I came through a portal. Accidentally."

The healer hopped back, shocked.

"Way-crossing!" Baraka barked, startled. "I swear, Lady, he never said a lick of—"

Chief silenced them with a wave of her hand. "Be easy." She fixed her attention on the priest, gentle. "A mistake, you said?"

The priest cringed. "It was my first time."

"We all have those, hey?" It made her smirk. "Listen: I got a way of handling mistakes." And she patted her leg. "You come sit. And the both of you. And we'll fix this up."

The priest just stared at her, his mouth hanging slightly open.

Chief cut her eyes over at Baraka. "What lies you've been feeding this man that he's staring at me like that?"

"It was her!" Baraka spluttered.

The healer grinned at the priest, winking. The priest covered his face.

"Of course," Chief muttered, almost to herself. Then she turned to the priest, schooling her face into an expression of benign reason. "I mean, you could be staying here, and being mine forever, or you could sit by me a few minutes."

The priest managed one step forward. "Just a few minutes? No touching?"

"Sure." Her smile took up almost the whole of her face.

Baraka just managed to stifle a deep and penetrating sigh.

* * *

Cai Yue kept very still, only letting his eyes dart around, as the chief mutant kicked her sleeping rug flat. The male plopped onto it on his haunches almost before she was done, and she quickly took a spot directly across from him. She looked up at Cai Yue and genially patted the rug beside her. Cai Yue needed a deep breath to unfreeze his muscles, but soon crouched down, just a little closer to her than to the male. He was almost immediately jostled to the side as the healer tried to squeeze between him and the chief. But he barely had time to be alarmed before the chief took hold of the healer's elbow and with one great tug of her muscled arm dragged the healer across to the opposite side of the circle from Cai Yue. The healer untangled herself until she was sitting on her heels.

Once everyone was finally settled, the chief opened her mouth to speak, but the firelight flashed on her fierce metal teeth, and a sudden chill caused Cai Yue to blurt, "Please tell me you're not going to eat me."

"Eat you?" The chief crossed her arms with a huff. "Where it is you're getting this idea you taste so good? Who was telling you how delicious you are?" She glared at Cai Yue for a moment, then leaned toward him a little and murmured something under her breath. Cai Yue thought he heard 'smell' and 'good' and decided he was better off not thinking about it.

"It's just—" he tried to explain, then giggled hysterically. "My, what big teeth you have."

The chief just stared at him and gave her head a little shake.

"His are kinda small," the healer said at last.

Cai Yue pressed his hand hard against his mouth so they wouldn't understand him if he said something stupid. Like, "All the better to eat you with."

The chief gave her head another shake. "Nevermind!" She pressed her hand to her chin and let out a deep breath. "They're not for eating people with."

Cai Yue lowered his hand just long enough to say, "Reassuring."

The healer sighed a bit churlishly. "There's a reason I'm getting dirt on my leggings, Milady?"

Cai Yue dropped both his hands to his sides, ready to push off the ground. "Then we're done here?"

The chief let out a sharp hiss and seized the hand closer to her. "Not yet, little fangs. Something's telling me the genius brigade here didn't even search you right."

The healer nearly stood, hissing in indignation. "I did so!" Then she smiled. "He's a he. And healthy."

The chief let go of Cai Yue's hand to cover her face, almost quick enough to hide her own grin. Cai Yue felt blood rush to his cheeks, so fast and hot it felt like he was on fire. He decided to bury himself in the sand and had just started digging when the male pulled him off the ground and started patting him down. _The male_. Cai Yue sagged against him in relief and got an elbow to the spine in return.

"Nothin' in his sleeves anyway," the male said after a moment, giving the arm of Cai Yue's coat a firm tug to illustrate.

"Yer missin' spots," the healer crooned, too innocently, her eyes bright.

"_You_ missed his pockets," the male shot back.

Cai Yue watched the healer's grin spread even further and frantically jerked himself out of the male's grip. As the male reached for him, he dashed his hands into his pockets and turned them inside out as fast as he could. The contents littered the ground around him as the male grabbed Cai Yue by the shoulder, squeezing hard.

"That's all I have, I swear," Cai Yue said. The two females crawled forward to get a closer look at Cai Yue's belongings, and the male pushed on Cai Yue's shoulder so that he fell to his knees in front of the pile.

"Well," said the chief, tapping her fingernails on the coins that had fallen out of Cai Yue's pockets. "Robbing you is right out..." She picked up a piece of string, set it aside, then cautiously picked up one of the firecrackers, giving it an intent sniff. "What's this? Fuses?"

The male growled, too close to Cai Yue's ear. "They burn things with it," he announced.

"Oh, no, no," Cai Yue said quickly. "Not those. They're too small. Toys, not weapons."

"Toys, hmm?" the chief said, setting aside the firecrackers. "I tell you what we'll do, hey?" She rubbed her hands together. "Let's make a game of it."

"Chess?" Cai Yue asked hopefully.

The male grunted. "Palace people play chess."

The chief shook her head with a short laugh. "Not us. Not quite."

"Hasn' got anything sharp on him," the healer pointed out. "What makes you think he knows fighting?"

"Fighting?" Cai Yue relaxed. "Of course I know fighting. I just need swords."

"You're a quick one!" The chief said, leaning toward him and grinning wolfishly. "If they sent more like you, I'd be in trouble."

Cai Yue leaned away from her. "Who sent who?" He squinted at her. "Who do you think I am?"

"Be careful," the healer murmured. "Questions are a rough barter with her."

"My physicker is full of nonsense, and you're smack in the middle of no and place," the chief growled, suddenly bad-tempered. She crossed her arms and squinted back at him, but she seemed more irritated in general than at him. "You talk chess, and you pack coat and coins and priesthood, and you're not from the palace?"

"I'm from _a_ palace," Cai Yue said slowly. "Well, I used to be, I mean," he added more quickly. "But I don't think it's the one you're thinking of."

"Ah," said the chief, clearly at a bit of a loss. After a brief pause, she turned and jabbed the male hard in the chest. "Get this gent something pointy!" she barked, her authority firmly back in place. "A pair of 'em."

"Milady." The male ducked his head with a flicker of his right hand and left the tent.

The chief turned back to Cai Yue. "So," she said, stretching the word out until it died. "I don't know how it's done, Mandalore fashion. Here, it's in threes. Him," she jerked her thumb at the tent flap, "and me, and her."

The healer beamed.

"You beat us," the chief continued, "you leave. We beat you, you stay." She raised an eyebrow. "No eating at any point."

"Right," Cai Yue said, rubbing the fingers of both hands against the thumbs and wishing he already had the swords. His gaze strayed to the points along her arms where those blades were hiding. "All armed?"

"Wh—" she snorted. "No." She smirked. "Wear us out, huh?" And she studied him. "You're sure you're not Kahn the Great and Powerful's envoy?" Her voice went sharp. "Now's the time to say it, if you are."

"Kahn?" Cai Yue's voice made an impressive journey to high and strangled in just one syllable. "Shao Kahn? Shao Kahn is actually here?" He raised his hands and began to summon gravity.

"Hey!" She snarled, slapping his arms down so that the small black ball dissipated into nothing. "Think a minute. We'd be dead, if so!"

The healer sidled up next to him, looking intently, for once, not at him but at the spot where the ball had been. "Well," she said, "Y'don't move the air, but I don't see what you _are_ moving." She looked back at Cai Yue. "Anyway, be easy. He's not so close, and we hate—" She clapped her hand over her mouth in midsentence and looked at the chief with wide eyes.

The chief glared at her like she'd like to cook _her_ for dinner.

The tent flap slapped closed, breaking the silence, and all three of them jumped and spun toward the entrance, where the male, swords in hand, was staring back at them.

"What?" he said, finally.

The chief cleared her throat. "Good man." She let out another deep breath. "Bring those here."

"Give him the handle ends, remember," added the healer, the barest quaver in her voice.

The male shot her a look and handed the weapons to Cai Yue with a sarcastic bow.

Cai Yue carefully took them, one in each hand, and hefted them, testing their weight. "They're longer than I'm used to," he said, after a couple of seconds, "but I guess they'll do." He turned to the chief. "If I'm not fighting all three of you armed, who am I fighting?"

That made the chief smile. "Well, let's go _outside_, and then he can go first." She put a hand on the male's shoulder and squeezed, genial. "He's earned it."

* * *

Something had them all rattled like hell. They'd frozen when Baraka stepped into the room. Or they'd already been standing like that. Anyone's guess what the cause was, really. He shrugged.

They had watchers, there in the dark—word had gotten around—but it was hardly the usual crowd. Lack of both food and sleep had made the rest of them lazy. Typical Sochasko. This was why they would never make Head Clan. Not even if—when, _when_—the day came.

It would come. Some years from now, twenty or thirty; he'd never been sure about the length of a human year. His moment. And here was another, smaller echo of the same. He wasn't going to throw the fight, exactly, but—the priest didn't belong here, and Chief would never let Baraka eat him, and Baraka didn't want to put up with all the squalling he would doubtless hear every night of the poor man's life if he stayed.

Wouldn't muffle his attacks, though—the priest was holding those swords way too businesslike for Baraka not to play it out like he meant it.

Chief nodded to him. He bowed to the priest and drew his blades.

The man flinched backward, then bowed to Baraka and lowered himself into his fighting stance, left leg forward and mostly straight, right leg bent back. He held his left sword out in front of his leg, at a slight angle from vertical. The right he held horizontally at his eye line, the hilt behind his head.

Baraka couldn't hold down a grin, hopping forward twice, testing the space between them with one blade. The priest pushed off his back foot and used his right sword to push Baraka's blade farther to the right while stabbing forward with his left.

The sword whistled in and almost caught Baraka in the arm; served him right for being careless. He leaned to the side and slashed inward with his other blade at a diagonal.

The priest hopped backward but still almost lost a button to Baraka's blade. He scrambled back another couple of steps—wanted to play keep-off. Maybe he'd never seen a nomad before.

Baraka huffed, twisted on his feet and brought the flat of his blade around, trying to swat the priest in the leg and keeping his other arm closer to his body this time. The priest spun away from the attack, sidestepping, and then at the end of his turn, he took a big step inward and swung his sword toward Baraka's torso, using the momentum of the spin to add to the swing.

Well. No amount of scramble could save the oversight, but Baraka dropped his weight hard—almost landing flat on his butt—and kept his insides _inside_ by doing so.

"First blood," he said, and pushed upward with both blades.

The priest looked a little stunned, himself, and choked up his grip on both swords. He settled his swords back into position and inched forward, on guard against attack and squinting like he didn't like the look of things.

Baraka swung outward wide and high with the top blade, toward the priest's face, stepping forward under it to poke at his midsection with the bottom one.

The priest pivoted on his front foot, away from the stab, in the same direction as Baraka's swing. He blocked high and vertical with his inside sword, but it didn't cut the momentum enough, and the flat of his own blade smacked him in the face. Baraka left a shallow slice across the priest's cheek, not really going for the killing stroke he could have landed.

The priest backed up a step, pale, and rubbed at the cut on his face. He stared at the blood on his hand, blinking. "Hey—ow!" he complained, and glared like it was Baraka's fault he'd tumbled out of the sky in the middle of the graveyard watch.

Not sure what to make of the priest's expression, or all those extra tricksy flashes of hand and blade and coat, Baraka launched a simple front kick to put some space between them.

The priest hopped backward on one foot, trying not to let the kick push him over. As soon as he got his balance beneath him, he pushed forward, raising his right sword in a horizontal block above his head as he fell forward into almost-splits and stabbed toward Baraka's front foot with his left sword.

The blade came down swift and certain and stuck him clean through the foot, pinning him to the sand. He blinked. The priest hopped back, white-faced. Baraka stared.

Then he swore, carefully getting the sword by the pommel. "I just might make you eat this," he gritted.

"Quit it!" the healer shrilled, pushing the priest out of the way. "Stay put," she ordered Baraka. Her hands glowed white, then green, and she pressed her _fingers_ into the wound, ignoring his snarl of pain. "Now, pull."

He did. The sword slid loose, sticking and fuchsia, black in the green light still radiating from her fingers, now resting lightly on raw, new skin. The cut was closed over like it had never been.

It was better than bleeding out. Maybe.

* * *

Cai Yue ran a shaking hand through his hair as he watched blood soak the sand around the male mutant's foot. "That wasn't supposed to work!" he protested, tearing his eyes away from the wound to look at the chief beseechingly. He let out a high-pitched laugh and gestured wildly toward the male's foot. "I mean, it's never happened before."

Actually, he'd never fought a real person with real swords before, but he thought it was probably too late to bring that up.

"That's what they all say," the chief answered dryly.

An unnatural burst of light appeared in Cai Yue's peripheral vision, and he looked back toward the male and the healer. The male was squirming while the healer's hand glowed.

"What's she doing?" he asked, taking a step toward her.

"Not you're business," said the chief gruffly, suddenly between them. "It's not her turn."

Cai Yue retreated back a few steps. "Then what's next?"

The chief uncrossed her arms. "Well. Given that you're not cutlets yet..." She grinned. "Let's wrestle."

"Oh," Cai Yue answered flatly. He gave the chief a thorough looking over. She was bigger than he was. By a not-small amount. And she looked compact.

He backed away, trying to get some distance, but she moved with him. He started folding up the cuffs of his jacket, stalling. The fabric was a lot sturdier than the silk he was used to and unrolled itself almost immediately. After doing both sleeves twice, he looked back up at the chief. She hadn't moved, still waiting patiently too close for comfort.

He really hadn't intended his day's events to include his death. The bishop always said that God worked in mysterious ways, but Cai Yue couldn't think of any reason an all-powerful being would need to resort to such unnatural circumstances just wipe out one lowly priest. He could have just choked on his porridge. It would have been more dignified.

Cai Yue finally gave the chief a brief nod and let his legs slip into the fighting stance he used when sword fighting, lowering his center of gravity. His arms hung uselessly at his sides. He thought for a moment, then lifted them up to where they would be if he held his swords. That felt weird, though, so he pulled them into fists close to his face like he'd seen boxers do.

"Yes!" The chief grinned wide and dropped her weight. "Good, excellent, wonderful." She lunged toward him.

He turned and tried to run away, awkward in the sand. On his third step, something held him back, and his foot slipped backward, causing him to fall onto his knee. The mutant had a hold of his coat tail.

He looked back to see that she was just staring at him happily, running the fabric of his coat between her hands. He reached back and tugged at it, trying to get to his feet and nearly overbalancing when the chief's hold gave way. He scrambled forward, picking his feet up madly as he spun around, expecting another attack.

She hadn't moved, apparently waiting for him to get ready again.

He rubbed his arm across his forehead and sank back into his fighting stance. He'd do better when she came at him again. He had to.

The chief leapt toward him, landing once lightly and then springing back into the air. He dumbly watched moonlight draw patterns across her metal teeth as they came closer and closer and closer—

He unstuck his feet from the ground at the last instant by falling over sideways. He hit the ground on one shoulder, and with a little push from that arm, turned his fall into a roll. He came up on his feet just off to the chief's side. She had already recovered from her lunge and turned to face him. Cai Yue continued to circle her, watching her carefully so he could escape her next attack. When it didn't come, he took a deep steadying breath then a sudden step forward, aiming a kick up toward her head.

She blocked with her elbow, pushing his leg up higher, then dropped low to kick his other foot out from under him. He saw the move coming, but with his leg still up in the air, his attempt to dodge caused him to tip over instead. He landed flat on his back in the sand.

Before he had time to think, before he had time to breathe, the chief had lunged again, landing on his chest and pinning him down, giant teeth in his face. He closed his eyes and tried to remember if he was allowed to administer the last rites to himself.

* * *

Baraka smirked as Chief forced the priest into splits and then knocked him to the ground. Chief gave a little squawk of female glee and sat right on him, triumphantly declaring, "Mine!"

The priest didn't take so well to this idea, scrambling to push her off his midsection, but she clung tight, was dratted heavy for her size, and most definitely did not play fair. He wriggled, groaning, and then went still, head bumping against the sand.

Chief leaned down over him, rubbed up close. "See, a little dirt never hurt anyone."

And then she _winked_. Baraka groaned.

The priest groaned, too. "Please get off me."

"You do ask pretty," she said, leaning down and pressing her tongue tip to his forehead: a child's kiss. She reached down and hauled him upright. "Up you get."

The priest stood stock-still, baffled by suddenly being on his feet. His eyes grew wide as he tentatively reached a hand up toward his forehead. Finding it wet, he jerked his hand away and rubbed it on the front of his coat, then used his sleeve to wipe off his forehead. "Thanks," he mumbled.

"Oh, anytime," Chief fairly burbled. Baraka felt slightly ill. So did the priest, apparently; he was so pale.

"Did I lose?" he asked, his voice tiny.

Chief grinned, and from the way it trembled Baraka was pretty sure she was straining not to lick her chops.

"That'll do fine," she hummed. "Let's call it a draw."

Baraka shook his head. "Oh, for the love of—"

The priest let out an explosive breath, part sigh, all relief. "I accept."

"Anyway," Chief continued, "my physicker's about ready to combust from pure envy."

The healer was bouncing from foot to foot like she had a case of ants somewhere unpleasant.

Chief's lips curved upward against her teeth. "Your turn."

The priest's face pinched into a grimace and he faced the healer straight-backed, stepping stiffly like a man on his way to the chopping block.

The healer beamed back at him.

"What now?" he asked, resigned. "More wrestling?"

"Oh, not with our hands." She nearly licked her lips. "Y've got power, right? Let's see how big it is."

He frowned at her antics—Baraka did the same—but breathed a sigh of relief, rubbing a hand to his heart. "Oh, definitely. It got me here, right?" His mouth hung open after he said it, like he could maybe get the words back. He kept looking around for their backup patrol or something, like the rest of the Clan was going to leap on him from behind every clump of sand.

The healer kept right on smiling at him, like she was figuring what he'd look like if she hexed off his clothes. "Certainly did, didn't it," she said, in the same sly tone. She was probably thinking it was a pity it hadn't witched him right into her tent.

"Yeah," he said slowly. "I was practicing and then, uh—" He rubbed the back of his head. "—my power caught hold of me and deposited me here."

"Oh? You can pick yerself up." She nodded understandingly; Edenians had power just like that. "D'you pick up other things with it too?"

Cai Yue shrugged. "Sure."

Chief was fidgety, never one for witchcraft even when it was useful. "Well. Do what you do, misset."

"As y'like." The healer nodded her deference and turned to the priest. "So, it's pickin' things up, then." And she kicked the nearest drift to illustrate.

"Oh," said the priest, like he'd expected more. He gave a little shrug and held his hands out. About three feet above the swell of sand, a dark, vaguely purple ball began to form, lighter indigo energy crackling around it from time to time. As it grew larger, starting from a pinprick and swelling to nearly the size of Baraka's fist, the ground beneath it began to quiver, and then, in growing threads, fly up into the ball. It leapt up in grains first, then bands, then a whole wash at once until the entire dune pulled itself out from under the healer's feet, knocking her on her backside. A perfect circle of sand hung in the air. "How's that?" the priest asked over his shoulder.

Baraka hopped back good and quick, not wanting to be anywhere near falling debris from a stunt like that. Chief muttered dark agreement under her breath beside him.

The healer sat transfixed, trembling to her eartips. "Marry me," she all but purred.

The priest blushed scarlet. "It was good?"

"Oh yes, very," she chittered rapidly, getting up. "It's no wonder y'were able to cross the ways! That was," and her voice went velvet, "marvelous."

"It's just a lot of practice," the priest answered politely, still red. "Lots of my people are much better at this sort of thing than I am. It used to be all of them would have been."

Baraka gaped, closed his jaws with a snap. "Yer not all..." He almost said 'witches'. "...priests? Y've lost powers, too, as a clan?" That last fell from his tongue before he could stop it.

Chief coughed, glaring daggers at him. "Is this right?" she demanded.

The priest didn't quite back up a step. "Our former emperor made it illegal to use our powers." He scratched at his elbow. "And there was supposed to be some big change in the past, where we changed from a more powerful form into this one." He spread his arms. "But that's probably just legend."

"But!" Baraka spluttered, shocked. "Not—yer not _the_—oh. They clipped yer wings." He could feel the blood leaving his face, saw the women watching him strangely.

The Sochasko were all cursed. This man wasn't a demon or a witch or even a priest. He was a dragon.

* * *

"Who clipped my wings?" Cai Yue asked, confused. "Oh, are you speaking metaphorically?" But the male mutant was starting to look unwell. Cai Yue felt his brow furrow. "Are you all right?"

"It—I—You were..." the male stammered. Then his words poured out in a rush. "We-don't-have-any-gold-please-eat-me-instead-of-the-girls, dragon spirit!" And he bowed, so deeply his head almost touched the ground.

The chief scoffed, "Oh, for..." But she seemed to choke on the rest of it, and she glanced warily from the male to Cai Yue.

Cai Yue stared at the male until he realized he was opening and closing his mouth like a fish. He opened and closed it twice more before he managed to make sound come out. "_I'm_ not going to eat _you_. We were never that kind of dragon."

"Hah!" the chief gasped, now slightly pale herself, and crossed her arms. "If he was gonna eat us he'd've done it before, right? Sure!"

The healer was unaffected by whatever had come over the other two and only looked slightly disappointed. "Not even a teensy nibble?" she cooed at Cai Yue, eyebrow dancing.

"No!" he answered, louder than he had intended. "I just—" He sighed. "I just want to go home."

"Well," said the healer at last, "you win." She sidled closer and poked him square in the chest. "Y'can put that down now, handsome."

Cai Yue turned around and saw a clump of sand hovering off the ground behind him. "Oh!" He let the ball of gravity dissipate, and the sand splattered onto the ground.

The healer did tremble then, hands clutched close beneath a massive fawning grin. "I love it when he does that," she murmured to no one in particular.

The male snorted. "Showoff." But he paled even further.

Cai Yue pressed his hands over his eyes and shook his head, then looked back up at the mutants. "I don't understand what's going on."

"Yer a dragon spirit," said the male. "I don't know if you were always dragons...but..." He stopped, folding his arms.

"It's just old stories!" the chief took over, shaking her head. "But...but we made a bad deal with a witch. The strongest of all the witches."

The healer scowled and spit the name: "H'nirr."

Cai Yue's knees swayed alarmingly. "Ennir?" He had studied Ennir for years when he was younger, had only stopped because the bishop had taken all his books about her out from under his mattress and given them to a library on another planet. But he'd never read anything about this.

The healer's head bounced on her neck with the force of the nod. "H'ennir," she repeated, then hissed, "She. Tricked. Us."

Cai Yue pressed his lips together. "She was like that," he said softly.

"Good food, she said," the chief gritted. "Easy water, she said. Do this little thing for me. And...we did. Or our parents did. Or theirs. And she gave us to _him_ when it was done," she snarled softly.

Cai Yue frowned again. "What?"

The chief cut her eyes at him. "You do have stories about us, yes? Don't we leap out from under beds and doorways to eat small ones who won't mind their parents?"

The healer sighed. "Yer confusing him." She looked over at Cai Yue. "All Chief means is we don't all like the great Kahn, so..." She faltered. "So there."

A shock tingled down Cai Yue's spine. He held up his hands, turning his palms toward them. "She gave you to Kahn?" But he didn't need their answer. "She used you in her war and then she gave you to Kahn." He shook his head and addressed the chief. "We do have those stories. I'm sorry." He bit his lip. "Can I help?"

The chief tilted her head. "You are a quick one." She smiled slowly. "Shame you won you're honor test, heh. We're..." She gave the male a meaningful glance. "Well, we'll do all right."

"Get home," the healer blurted. "An' tell them, maybe. Tell 'em we let you go." Her bottom lip bled pink where she nipped at it. "Fair is fair. We don't forget."

Cai Yue nodded, his head still spinning as the mutants' story slotted itself into his brain. He bowed to them. "I'll do that."

Two minutes later, he landed on his rear on the floor of his room and put his arm up to his mouth, trying to cough out all the sand the portal's forces had flung down his throat. As the coughing fit subsided, he looked up to see his door wide open and nearly every priest in the compound lined up outside it, looking in at him with wide eyes.

The bishop took a step into the room, looking around at the destruction. Bits of the furniture had broken off and gone missing, and Cai Yue's only blanket was gone. The bishop opened his mouth, but no sound came out. "Son, what have you done?" he finally asked.

Cai Yue stood up hurriedly, shaking sand out of his pant leg, then bowed. "I'm ready to give myself over fully to God now."


	23. Movement III: Allegro, Chapter TwentyOne

**Transposition**  
by Nyohah

Movement III:  
**Allegro**

**Chapter Twenty-One**

* * *

With the hood of her robe pulled low enough to conceal her face, Kitana couldn't see much of the line of nomads stretching before her. And try as she might, she couldn't see the palace gate at all. She had no way to gauge how much farther she had to go, how many more nomads had to pass security before her. But judging from the way the sun had moved from warming her face under her hood to warming the top of her head, she had already been standing in line for hours.

"Djurash?" she whispered, keeping her voice so quiet she could barely hear it.

The nomad standing behind her heard her anyway and took a step forward to speak directly into her ear. "What is it this time?" he hissed.

"I don't think this is going to work," she answered.

Djurash sighed. "What is it this time?"

"The inspector will only see two or three others between inspections of our decoy. He'll never be fooled."

The nomad made a noise like a half-cough in the back of his throat. "He will. He sees only teeth."

"You're not worried, then?"

"I'm not worried."

But his short temper that morning told Kitana that wasn't precisely the truth. "You sound worried," she shot back, her own nerves leaving her in less control of her tongue than usual.

"I'm not worried about _this_," Djurash clarified testily. "_This_ is the easy part."

And indeed it was. The nomads were required to wear robes when inside the city so they wouldn't frighten its citizens. Kitana could thus hide herself among them much more easily than she had expected. The inspector checking them all one by one as they entered wasn't looking for identification; he was only checking that they were all nomads, they weren't bringing any filthy desert diseases into the palace, and they weren't trying to smuggle in any weaponry—unauthorized weaponry, that was, since the nomads themselves could never be entirely free of it.

And with the way Djurash and the nomad captain had dealt with Tanya in mind, Kitana did not doubt they could stage the necessary distraction.

"What _I_ am worried about," Djurash continued, "is whether you can actually get me to Ennir."

"I'll find her," Kitana said, almost too loudly. Checking herself, she added, "Assuming she has taken up Shang Tsung's role—which she must have, given her history, if _your_ scouts are correct in reporting his death—she'll be living in one of the towers. If she's not home, she will probably be attending to Shao Kahn or that master of his—the Demon—and those places are nearby and easily searchable. What _I'm_ more worried about is how you expect to manage to kill her."

"No one responds well to beheading or impalement," Djurash whispered, offhandedly.

"If you can get close enough," Kitana said. "When I fought her—"

Djurash poked her in the back, warning her to be quiet. He began to push her forward, crowding behind her until she bumped into the large, solid back of the nomad ahead of her.

This was it. Kitana waited, scarcely able to breathe, as their clump of nomads hobbled forward until she could hear the voice of the inspector. He approved one nomad after another, boredom slurring his words.

Blind as she was, there was no way for Kitana to be prepared for the elbow to the stomach she received when the three nomads ahead of her started brawling. As she caught her breath, she heard the inspector shout, alarmed, and the shuffle of feet from the soldiers guarding the palace gate as they came forward to break up the fight.

Then something large and heavy slammed into her, knocking her into Djurash and the two of them onto the ground. The heavy thing landed on her, then rolled, as did Djurash, kicking and cursing, and Kitana felt the light flick of his fingers on her back.

She stood, making a show of brushing herself off, as the nomads who had been brawling laughed apologies at her, and the nomad who had been knocked into her—the last to pass inspection—silently fell into her place.

Kitana gave the nomads who had been fighting a healthy shove as they continued to heckle her, then walked past them, up dozens of stairs, and into the arena.

* * *

"Yuan?" Ching called. "Are you ready yet?"

Yuan hurried into the kitchen. "Yes," he said, dropping a pad of paper and four pens on the table. "No."

He ran back out of the room, returning with his glasses in hand. He stopped in the doorway and slid them on, then spread his hands. "Yes. Now. Really."

Ching vaguely smiled at him. Kung Lao and Mr. Yen just stared. Yuan handed out pens.

It wasn't really late yet, but everyone else had fled the kitchen when the meeting had ended, barely even staying to hear that Yuan planned to try to figure out what the bad guys were up to if anyone wanted to help.

The response was underwhelming.

"Okay," said Yuan, sitting down and pulling the lid off his pen. "Numbers. Let's get down what we were talking about earlier. What do we know?"

"I was Number Three," said Ching.

"And Chat was Number Seven," said Yuan, listing numbers in order down the page and adding names next to the ones they had identified.

"Vendetta is Number Four and that shadow ninja is Number Six," said Kung Lao.

"Shao Kahn is One, and Shang Tsung is Two," Mr. Yen finished.

"What else?" asked Yuan.

"There were a lot of Number Eights with us in Hong Kong, all men," said Ching. "One Number Nine as well, but although I think he was human, he behaved like an animal."

"Number Six has something to do with Edenia," said Kung Lao. "Something that would make it natural for him to be there."

"Okay, good." Yuan wrote _Edenia_ next to _shadow ninja_. "What else?" No one answered immediately, and he snapped his fingers. "Come on!"

"Come on yourself," said Kung Lao. "That's all we know. That's the problem."

"Hmm," said Ching, putting her chin in her hand. "Shang Tsung once told me the name of the man who was Number Three before me. Emperor something. It was like Yuan. Emperor Yuan?"

"Emperor Yuen?" asked Mr. Yen, inspecting his pen. "Ming's father."

Yuan stopped writing. "My grandfather?"

"Yes, that's it," said Ching.

"I believe it," said Mr. Yen, without looking up. "He was not a nice person."

"Then here's our list," said Yuan. "Shao Kahn, Shang Tsung, Ching—formerly Emperor Yuen—then Vendetta, blank, shadow ninja, Chat, men, beast."

"It still sounds like a hierarchy." Mr. Yen tapped his pen down the list, leaving little dots by each number Yuan had written. "Shao Kahn first and Shang Tsung second? Emperor Yuen, then Vendetta? The beast at the end?"

"And Chat near it?" Ching added drily.

"I would agree with you," said Kung Lao, "if that shadow ninja hadn't implied that Number Six is tied to Edenia somehow."

"Maybe it's just common knowledge among that group that Number Six had a stake in Edenia," Mr. Yen said.

"I didn't know," Ching said. "But I was never told anything about what my Number meant."

Mr. Yen rubbed his lip. "They do seem to come in pairs," he mused.

"What do you mean?" asked Yuan.

"Look." Mr. Yen drew a line between Shao Kahn and Shang Tsung. "These two are usually working together." He drew another line between the numbers three and four. "Vendetta was Emperor Yuen's right-hand man. He basically ran the Lin Kuei, even then. And Chat and these Eights were at least in the same place at the same time." He drew a question mark beside the line connecting them.

"Shang Tsung is subordinate to Shao Kahn," said Kung Lao, adding an arrowhead to the line pointing to Shao Kahn. "And you say Vendetta was subordinate to Emperor Yuen." He added another arrowhead.

Mr. Yen nodded.

"So the even Numbers are sort of the odd Numbers' assistants?" Kung Lao asked. "That would explain why the shadow ninja said Number Four had a responsibility to Number Three." He turned to Ching. "Vendetta's supposed to be your henchman."

She smiled. "We should tell Yuan's brother. I suspect he'll like that."

Kung Lao pushed back his hat and snapped his fingers.

Yuan looked at him. "What?"

"Wait, wait," Kung Lao said, still snapping. "Yes."

"What?" Yuan asked again, less patiently.

"According to Raiden," Kung Lao said, "your brother could have gotten back to Earth at any time."

"No," Yuan answered, "he can't make portals."

"I mean a person cannot be kept from the realm in which they were born."

"But he wasn't born here. I was; he wasn't." Yuan tapped his pen on the table. "I don't think the thing that brought him was born here either, if it was even _born_." He shook his head. "Anyway, back to the Numbers—"

"No, I'm going somewhere with this," said Kung Lao. "_Shang Tsung_ was born here." He pointed to the ground. "But Raiden said he gave up his right to come to this realm to ally himself with Shao Kahn. Why? What did he gain?"

"Mortal Kombat," said Ching.

"But how is that a gain?"

"He's right," said Mr. Yen, sitting up. "If Shang Tsung hadn't given up his right to be on Earth, there wouldn't have been a need for Mortal Kombat—he could have opened up Earth for Shao Kahn at any time. He took a loss in that agreement, and it's obvious why the realm's protectors signed off on it, but why did Shang Tsung?"

"It must have had something to do with this Numbers gig," said Kung Lao. "Maybe people from this realm can't be one of the Numbers."

"But look," said Ching, pointing, "Numbers Seven through Nine were all from Earth."

"Seven through Nine?" Yuan asked. He ran his pen down the list again. Shao Kahn, Shang Tsung, Ching (formerly Emperor Yuen), Vendetta, blank, shadow ninja, Chat, men, beast. "That's it," he said. "It's the realms."

"It is?" asked Kung Lao, sounding a bit surprised.

"Yes," said Yuan, surer with every passing second. "Shang Tsung had to give up his right to exist on Earth not just so he could be a Number, but so he could be Number _Two_."

"I don't follow you," said Ching.

"They come in pairs, like Mr. Yen said, but in pairs by realm. Look." Yuan added one last set of notes to the paper, writing the realm associated with each entry next to the name. Outworld, Outworld; Mandalore, Mandalore; blank, Edenia; Earth, Earth. "We're missing a piece, I admit, but it's right there."

"Number Nine isn't part of a pair," said Ching.

"But you said he was kind of just a beast," said Yuan. "Maybe he doesn't count. Maybe he's something different, like a bodyguard."

"Well, Ching," said Mr. Yen, "did you ever see any indication that the Number Eights should have been subordinate to Chat?"

Ching shrugged. "Not really, but she was young when she left. And they didn't really start multiplying until the Demon Master started collecting babies. They each took care of a group of them."

"Collecting babies?" asked Kung Lao, looking horrified.

Ching nodded grimly. "He was trying to raise the next emperor of China."

"Oh," said Yuan. "_Oh_."

"What?" asked Kung Lao.

"_Emperor_ Kahn, _Emperor_ Yuen, Chinese _Emperor_?"

"Oh," said Kung Lao.

"What do we have, then?" asked Mr. Yen. "Odd Numbers are the evil rulers for each realm—"

"And even are the lackeys," said Ching.

"It fits," said Yuan, spreading his hands. "But it doesn't really tell us anything, except that they're trying to take over all the realms, which we already knew."

"Maybe that's all it is," said Mr. Yen.

Yuan shook his head, drawing boxes around the pairs. "Why even have this organization? Why assign numbers? Why pairs? Why have so many Number Eights? Why not just make them ten and twelve and fourteen?" He rubbed his forehead, staring at the paper.

"I think the bigger question now," said Kung Lao, "is does it have anything to do with you two? And what _is_ with you two?"

Yuan looked up from the paper, still frowning, to see Ching looking at him. They both turned to Mr. Yen.

* * *

Deep under the surface of Yanxubin, in the underbelly of Lin Kuei headquarters, Noob Saibot and Vendetta watched as Yen Sa's kidnapped scientists finished making another of the Lin Kuei's young ninjas into a cyborg. This would be, if all went well, only the second successful automation. Noob Saibot thought watching the surgery had made Vendetta even angrier than usual. After all, this was supposed to be the third automation, and he was still—_smoldering_—over the loss of the second to his daughter and her back-from-the-grave partner.

Noob Saibot didn't care so much about that, but he would have been much happier if this were the thirtieth automation. Or the thirty thousandth. There were people waiting for this catastrophe to take off, after all. And he was anxious to steal his own personal cyborg army. He'd be in the perfect position, if only things were moving faster.

Watching the scientists detach the last of the tubes from the new and improved Lin Kuei ninja, Noob Saibot finally snapped, sighed heavily, and stamped a foot on the ground. It took a lot to break his patience, but this was it.

"Isn't there any way to make this faster?" he demanded.

"It's a delicate process," answered Vendetta tightly. It sounded as if he hadn't even moved his jaw. "An _experimental_ delicate process."

"You could at least stack them up," Noob Saibot said. "Do surgery after surgery. The surgery itself doesn't even take that long; it's all the downtime."

Vendetta turned to face him. "The scientists will get tired. They'll make mistakes. More of my ninjas will die."

"I don't _care_ if more of your ninjas die," Noob Saibot shot back. "I need carnage, and I need it as soon as inhumanly possible."

Vendetta looked at him for a moment, trying to intimidate him. He failed and turned away, saying, "They have to hand-make all the electronic parts."

"Then go take over a manufacturing plant!" Noob Saibot shouted, his voice gaining an unpleasant high-pitched overtone like howling wind.

"Don't _tell me what to do_!" Vendetta bellowed, louder.

Noob Saibot clenched his teeth and let himself become very still and quiet. "_Ennir_ is waiting on this," he warned. "Do you want to take this up with her?"

Vendetta didn't immediately have an answer, his eyes flicking back and forth nervously. Finally, his eyes settled on Noob Saibot again, and he shook his head. "I'll talk to the scientists. _You_ talk to Ennir. You're the one loyal to her."

"Oh," Noob Saibot said airily, turning away, "I'm not strictly _loyal_ to her. She lost all her ties when she lost her powers, mine included, and I haven't felt the need to reattach it." He shrugged. "I just owe her a favor; that's all."

Vendetta snorted, also turning back to the glass. "Delivering Earth is a pretty big favor."

"So is what she did for me," Noob Saibot answered drily. "Besides," he added, "I need your army so _I_ can rule the Earth."

Vendetta gave him a look that could have melted rock. "You _can't have it_," he seethed.

"Oh, I'm sorry," said Noob Saibot, "is that what _you_ intended to do? Well, you're not eligible."

"You're no more eligible than I am," Vendetta retorted.

Ignoring that, Noob Saibot continued, "Even if you did get promoted—which you can't—you'd be Three. Nothing to do with Earth."

"And you'd be Five," said Vendetta. "No matter how you cut it, we're in the same situation."

Noob Saibot crossed his arms. He knew Vendetta couldn't see the smirk beneath his mask, but from the color his face turned, it seemed he got the hint anyway.

Then he snapped, pulling a six-inch dagger from beneath the right side of his orange tunic and shoving it into the center of Noob Saibot's chest before he could react.

Noob Saibot spread his arms and looked down at the dagger, blinking, shock temporarily clearing his mind.

Vendetta stared at him, panting beneath his mask, his expression gradually becoming confused as Noob Saibot continued to stand.

"That hurts," Noob Saibot said sternly. Then he screamed, "I hate it when people do that!"

Vendetta took a step backward.

Noob Saibot took a step forward. "I'm not going to tell anyone you did that," he said, yanking the dagger out and watching as the blackness that formed him flooded into the gaping hole in his chest, filling it back in. He pointed the still-clean dagger at Vendetta, whose eyes had widened considerably. "And _you_ are going to cooperate with me."

Vendetta nodded minutely.

* * *

"I don't know very much, I'm afraid," Mr. Yen said, rubbing his forehead. "The point of the prophecy, of course, is that there will be—or are, I suppose—a boy and a girl who together can stop the evil forces who are systematically conquering our realms. Forever."

"Wow," said Yuan, sitting back.

"You can see why we were interested."

Yuan folded his hands over his stomach, nodding. Then he leaned forward again. "But how?"

Mr. Yen shook his head. "I've never read the prophecy or heard it spoken in full. We don't have a copy of it anymore. Not since Mandalore..."

"But you've heard some of it?" asked Ching.

Mr. Yen nodded. "There was a man in our honor guard who was obsessed with these sorts of things. He quoted part of it after we lost Mandalore. He had it memorized." Mr. Yen chuckled. "If I remember right, you're supposed to have 'power beyond imagining'."

"I can _imagine_ a lot," said Yuan.

Mr. Yen wasn't listening. "Maybe that's not right. Not power. You had different things."

"Different?" asked Ching.

"Well, yes. I think that was the beauty of it. You complement each other somehow."

Yuan smiled at Ching.

"I wish I could remember how," said Mr. Yen.

Ching grimaced. "It's hardly your fault."

"Of course, you shouldn't even be talking to me," said Mr. Yen. "I wasn't involved in any of the speculation that occurred after we came to Yanxubin. That was all Hua Quy Ling and the Lis."

* * *

"Oh, I remember when Rah Cai Yue quoted the prophecy," Yuan's father said. "It was just depressing at the time."

"Do you remember anything about it?" Yuan asked. "Mr. Yen said Ching and I were supposed to be special in different ways."

"Oh, yes," Yuan's father said, "the two talents were different." He put his fingers to his lips and stared at the ceiling.

"Can't you remember anything?" Yuan asked impatiently.

"Well," Yuan's father said slowly. "I remember thinking one of them was silly."

"Silly?"

"Yeah, not what you would expect."

"You're killing me, Dad." Yuan dropped his hands onto the table.

"Oh, right. The word was 'charisma', but Cai Yue explained that in these sorts of texts, that meant a divinely bestowed gift, not a tendency toward televangelism."

"Oh," said Yuan, disappointed. "Well, what about the other one?"

"I think it was power."

"So one of us has a gift, and the other has a power." Yuan rubbed his eyes. "That is helpful."

"Don't blame me," said his father. "Blame the prophecy writers. They're the loons who come up with this stuff."

"Ching and Tung said they were taken away from their father because of some prophecy," Yuan said. "Is that related?"

"Oh, that was—" Yuan's father cleared his throat. "That was a misguided attempt at—misdirection."

"Oh, really," Yuan said flatly.

"Of course," Yuan's father answered. "How likely is it there's two prophecies about the same girl? We were, uh—" He placed a hand over his eyes. "—trying to protect them."

"You suck," said Yuan.

"Well, Ching and Tung were both suspects for the real prophecy," Yuan's father answered defensively. "It was only natural after their mother's freaky mind powers."

"Her what?" asked Yuan.

His father just made a crazy gesture beside his head. Yuan let his head fall on the table.

"Anyway," his father continued, "there was some clause that the boy and the girl could destroy each other, and we thought it best to separate them until we figured out who was who."

"What?" Yuan asked, speaking into the table.

"I don't know. Apparently fate wasn't enough to guarantee they'd like each other." Yuan's father gave a short laugh.

"Wait a second," Yuan said, lifting his head.

"What is it?" his father asked. "You have that look on your face again."

* * *

"You're supposed to be unbeatable," said Yuan's mother. "That always seemed to be the most important part. If it's true—unbeatable." She shook her head. "We were beaten so hard, you know."

Ching smiled a little. "Yuan and I have both been beaten plenty."

"Yes, but you're still here, aren't you? Still fighting?"

Ching nodded once, looking down. "Can you really be sure it's us?"

"I wasn't," Yuan's mother answered frankly, "until it started happening."

"What do you mean?"

"Do you think any of us, in our right minds, would have run fighting into Outworld again? After what we escaped?"

Ching folded her hands. "Did you do it because it was me?"

Yuan's mother turned her mug in her hands. "Not specifically. Stronger people make us brave. Like your mother. If she had lived, we might have saved Edenia."

"My mother?" Ching asked.

"I knew her very well," Yuan's mother answered. "She was one of my truest friends, and I can't even say how much she sacrificed for me."

"And she was strong?"

"Oh, she was strong," Yuan's mother agreed. "Frighteningly strong." She took a sip of her tea. "She could kill dozens at once without touching them or summoning the smallest hint of elemental power."

Ching stared at the older woman. "Are you serious?"

"I watched her do it many times."

"How?"

Yuan's mother shrugged. "A new gift. Edenians and even humans often have powers that aren't strictly elemental. But not us. She was unique."

"So she had telepathic powers? Or telekinetic?"

"To some extent." Yuan's mother frowned. "But she had this ability to get into other people's minds and take away their lives. They'd just fall, and that was it."

Ching covered her mouth with her hands.

"And even she was beatable," Yuan's mother said after another sip of tea.

* * *

Half an hour after leaving Mr. Yen, Ching and Yuan met in a hallway. They didn't speak. They didn't have to. They could tell from the looks on each other's faces.

They knew.


	24. Chapter Twenty Two

**Transposition**  
by Nyohah

**Chapter Twenty-Two**

* * *

"What do you think?" Yuan asked quietly a few moments after he finished explaining his and Ching's plan. The two of them stood on the secretary's desk in the lobby of Mr. Yen's company, their allies spread before them. They were too many to fit in Mr. Yen's kitchen.

Yuan's brother, arms crossed, said, "We still have to take out Vendetta."

"I _know_!" Yuan shouted. "That's _in the plan_." He took a breath. "Besides that, what do you think?"

Chat raised her hand. "You're both pretty creepy."

"Um, yes," said Yuan. "Anyone else?"

Raiden took a step forward. Everyone else seemed to shrink back. The thunder god raised his head until Yuan could actually see the energy flickering in his pure-white eyes. Yuan resisted the urge to back up; he'd probably fall off the back of the desk.

"It's not Mortal Kombat," Raiden said.

"I know that," Yuan sighed. "I feel like I keep having to make this point over and over—"

"The elder gods have not sanctioned it," Raiden continued, "and no matter your individual skills, I cannot participate. I can only wish you success." He lowered his head, and with a crack and a flash of light, he was gone.

"Oh," Yuan said, blinking his eyes to try to clear them. "Well, we still have plenty of people."

"No," said Liu Kang. "No. This is ludicrous. I won't follow a nerd and a former enemy into a trigger-happy assault on Outworld without Raiden's blessing."

"Raiden gave us a blessing," Kung Lao said, laying a hand on Liu Kang's arm. "He just can't come."

Liu Kang turned to Kung Lao. "If he can't come, we shouldn't go. It's suicide to go to Outworld without the protection of a god."

Yuan groaned and put his hands over his face. "Have you all forgotten or do you not believe me? Half of you went!"

Ching touched his arm, silencing him. "Liu Kang," she said, "you didn't need Raiden's help to defeat Shao Kahn at the tournament in Outworld, did you?"

"No," Liu Kang said firmly. "There is no 'help' during a tournament."

"Then what makes you think you need his help now?"

Liu Kang frowned at her.

"Yeah," said Kung Lao, catching on. "Don't you want to take him out again? For good?"

"You killed him once," said Ching, "and he came back. But this time? If everything works out...if we have your help..."

Liu Kang crossed his arms and stared at her, suspicious.

"He had our Shaolin brothers killed," whispered Kung Lao. "It is our sacred duty—"

"All right, shut up," said Liu Kang. "I'll do it." He pointed a finger at Yuan and Ching. "But it's not for you. Know that."

Yuan relaxed. If Liu Kang had walked away—actually refused to participate—they would have been back to square one.

"Nobody should be fighting for us," said Ching. "We all have our grievances. It's time to air them. Call your targets."

Yuan's brother took two running steps and jumped onto the desk. "Don't forget about Vendetta," he said, turning to face the others.

"I'm not forgetting about Vendetta," said Yuan. "Here are our targets. In Outworld, we have Shao Kahn, that witch Ennir, and the Demon Master. Leave him to us. And on _Earth_," he emphasized, looking at his brother, "we have Vendetta and the shadow ninja, Number Six." He spread his hands. "Floor's yours."

"What about Shao Kahn's armies?" asked Kung Lao.

"Uh, we obviously don't have enough people to take on an army," Yuan said. "That's why we're going to be quick—so they don't notice."

"That's crazy."

"It worked last time."

"It's still crazy."

Yuan shrugged. "But you can't refuse."

Yuan's father rested his fingers on his mouth. "You really shouldn't say that very often."

Yuan shrugged again. "I believe Liu Kang has decided to fight Shao Kahn, and my brother has his eye on Vendetta. Next?"

"I'll go with Liu," said Kung Lao.

"I won't need you," said Liu Kang.

"You might."

"I won't."

"But we're the only two Shaolin left. It's my sacred duty—"

"Fine. But stay out of my way."

Kung Lao nodded at Yuan. "We have Shao Kahn covered."

"Sorry, Yuan," his father said, "but I _have_ to go after Vendetta. After everything he's done..."

"Not a problem," answered Yuan. "Needs to be done. That leaves us Ennir and the shadow ninja. Any takers?"

"I'm also staying, Yuan," said his mother, "but I want to fight the shadow ninja."

"Are you sure?" asked Yuan.

"He killed my friend. I want revenge."

"By yourself?"

His mother smiled slightly. "Honor will come with me. Together, we'll be fine."

"She killed Shang Tsung," said Ching.

Yuan pursed his lips. "Okay. That leaves Ennir open and plenty of options left for doubling up."

"I would like another chance at fighting the witch," said Tung. She turned to Chat. "Are you with me?"

"Are you kidding?" asked Chat. "I'm not going back to that creepy place. I'll stay here and fight ninjas."

"We already have two people going after Vendetta," said Yuan. "He's not _that_ powerful."

"But we do need people to keep the other ninjas away from us while we infiltrate headquarters," said his brother, "and you are very welcome to do that."

Yuan gave his brother a short glare.

"I don't think I can fight the witch by myself," said Tung.

"This is Ennir we are talking of?" asked Mistral. "Then Lundiy and I will help you. We are Kitsune. Our order was born to fight Ennir."

"Oh, good," said Tung. "Then you know how to?"

Mistral looked at Lundiy, who shook her head.

"Yes," said Mistral.

"Right," said Yuan. "Well, that's all our targets. So what are the rest of you going to do?"

"If it's all right, Yuan," said Mr. Yen, "I was thinking about the scientists who worked for me and were kidnapped. I think I ought to make it my priority to get them out safely. I'll need backup, though."

"Jax and I will go with you," said Sonya. "Won't we, Jax?"

"Lot better than Outworld," said Jax.

"Isn't anybody else coming to Outworld with us?" asked Yuan. "Enmity, what about you?"

His brother said, "You can guard the girls at the portal if you want, in case something goes wrong."

Enmity shook her head. "I have to help bring down my father. I'm going with you."

Yuan's brother didn't answer.

"I'll guard the girls," said Inspector Lau.

"Thanks," said Mulan. Biao Ying Xi nodded.

Yuan rubbed his face. More people were staying behind than he'd hoped. More people were staying than were going. But he had given them the choice, and all the targets were covered. There was just one last decision to make.

"Who's taking her?" he asked, pointing at Sindel.

"We are," Lundiy said immediately.

"You are?" Yuan was surprised.

"I'm the best at controlling her. If she goes with someone else, she might be dangerous."

"And it's only fair," said Tung. "Two people each are going after the Demon Master and Shao Kahn. We have three—myself and the two Kitsune warriors."

"Well, really," Lundiy said, "together we make _one_ Kitsune warrior."

"What?" asked Tung.

"It's nothing," said Lundiy. "Forget it."

Mulan raised her hand.

"Uh, yes?" Yuan said.

"Who's going to guard the portal on the other side, to keep things from coming through?"

"Um," Yuan looked around. "Um. Well, if we're quick enough and everyone does a good job keeping their targets occupied, that won't matter."

"It matters to me," said Mulan.

"I'll do it," said Kung Lao.

"I thought you were going after Shao Kahn."

"Liu doesn't need me." Kung Lao looked over his shoulder. "Do you, Liu?"

"No," said Liu Kang. "I will defeat Shao Kahn myself, as before."

"See?"

"Cool," said Yuan. "Then that's everything."

He looked out at the warriors facing him. "This is really it. Let's win."

* * *

"I can't see any reason to write this all down."

"Shut up," Yuan said. He leaned against the front of the reception desk, scribbling on an engineering pad. Everyone else had gone.

Most everyone.

His brother leaned back against the desk, elbows holding him up. "Seriously. If people can't remember what they're supposed to do, do you really want them helping you?"

Yuan lifted his pen in exasperation. "I _want_ every able-bodied warrior who's on our side."

"Careful. Your girlfriend says that saying things like that is how you got me into this mess."

"You can't honestly be upset that you're back."

"Back _here_. You couldn't have sent me somewhere else? I hear Spain is nice."

"Look," Yuan said, setting his pen down and holding out his hands. "These are your options: here, there. Where would you rather be?"

"At least it was warm there."

"You don't like being warm." Yuan picked up his pen. "And don't talk to Ching." He bent his head to his work.

"Oh, jealous, are you?"

Yuan didn't answer. His brother didn't leave.

After about half a minute, someone else called his name. It was his mother.

He turned around quickly. "Yeah, mom?"

His brother made an irritated sound in his throat and started to walk away. His mother tried to catch his arm, but he slipped away and left the room.

"Jerk," said Yuan.

His mother shook her head, moving forward to stand next to him.

"Are you angry at me?" she asked.

He looked away and set his pen down, lining it up carefully with the grid on his paper. "I'm worried. I mean, you're off by yourself—"

"But you're angry that I'm not going."

He looked down at his feet. "I think we have more than enough people to take on the Lin Kuei."

"Don't be angry," his mother said. "It's not because of you. It's because of Rah Cai Yue. I can't let the monster who killed him go free." She pulled on his shirt sleeve, adjusting the cuff. "You know, you remind me a lot of him. I'm proud of you."

"Because he also had a certain _gravity_ to him."

She shook her head. "It's deeper than that." Her expression became suddenly pained. "Cai Yue and I were separated, and he never came back."

Yuan felt the same worry clench his insides. "He was alone with that shadow ninja, and he never came back."

She grabbed his hand. "I'll be here when you get back."

"And I'm coming back."

His mother nodded. He hugged her.

* * *

"You're all going to die," said Mulan, "and it's going to be my fault for sending you there."

"No," said Kung Lao. They were alone together in one of Mr. Yen's well-furnished hallways. Mulan played with a priceless-looking vase. Kung Lao leaned on an antique grandfather clock. "We're the crazy ones who decided to go."

Mulan raised her eyebrows at him.

"Well, you know," he said. "Anyway, I've been there before, and I didn't die."

"But that was a tournament. It was _controlled_."

"Yeah." Kung Lao laughed. "Not after Liu killed Shao Kahn."

"I guess that probably made them angry."

"Angry? We made it out seconds before the lynch mob—but of course in Outworld, the lynch mobs have their pitchforks growing out of their arms."

"It just sounds so horrible."

He shrugged. "Think of it this way: Liu and I've been there. Not dead. Mileena and Sub-Zero—I mean Ching and Yuan—both there, not dead. Raiden was there. Sonya and Jax were there. Sonya was even _captured_, and she's not dead. And then there was this raid of theirs—but you'd know more about that."

"Yeah," said Mulan. "Chat and Tung both went. Yuan brought Ching back. Both Yuan's parents went."

"And? Not dead."

"True, but Enmity attacked us while they were gone, and it was a disaster."

"Oh," said Kung Lao, "so you're really not worried about us; you're worried about yourself."

Mulan cracked a smile.

"Well, you have that inspector to look after you. What's his name?"

"We had Inspector Lau last time." Mulan crossed her arms. The vase dangled precariously from one hand. "And Mr. Yen. And—" Her voice quieted. "—Smoke."

"Ah," said Kung Lao. They were both quiet for a moment. "Well, at least this time you have the comfort of knowing half the village is out beating back the Lin Kuei."

She laughed. "Yuan was so angry, did you see—?"

The grandfather clock _bonged_ behind Kung Lao, and he jumped halfway across the hall. Mulan covered her mouth as she laughed.

Kung Lao stared at the time. "Oh, sorry, but I have to go." He started down the hallway. "There's something I have to do—very important." He took off running.

* * *

Sub-Zero was headed for one of the offices near the reception area in Mr. Yen's company, hoping to catch some sleep or meditate, when Enmity stepped out of the shadows and snagged his arm.

Meditation was something he'd always seen as a chore, a necessity to keep himself fit for fighting, like weight-lifting, rather than anything he enjoyed. But while he had been trapped on the lava planet, he hadn't had much else to do, and he found he was starting to miss it.

At any rate, he wasn't likely to get much sleep, but the relaxation was at least restful. And as Enmity had just demonstrated, he really needed rest.

"What do you want?" he asked, using his legitimate annoyance to mask his surprise. He twisted his arm out of her grip.

"You didn't seem to want me to come with you," she said. "Is that going to be a problem?"

"I don't know," he said. "Is it?"

Her lips flattened. "What do you mean?"

"I mean it won't be a problem unless you make it a problem."

"And you think I'm going to make it a problem. Why?"

He sighed and ran a hand through his hair, glancing wistfully at one of the office doors. "To start with, I'm concerned about your motives. We all plan to get rid of the Lin Kuei after we get rid of Vendetta. But it seems to me more likely that you recognize he's destroying the clan, and you want to save it from him."

Her expression didn't change.

"And there's truth there, isn't there?" he asked.

"I won't make trouble."

"Sure you won't," he said. "Until you see daddy about to die, and you have second thoughts and switch your colors, yet again."

"I won't let that happen." She exhaled softly. "I'm preparing myself for his death."

He raised his eyebrows.

"I won't kill him, though," she added.

He leaned forward. "_I'm_ going to kill him."

She folded her arms. "Then we're agreed."

"Apparently."

He waited a moment to see if she wanted anything else. When she didn't speak, he turned to leave.

She grabbed his arm to stop him.

And if anyone tried that again before he could get some rest, he was going to punch them.

Enmity stared at him intensely with a strange, guarded expression on her face. "Are you ever going to trust me?"

"Trust you?" Sub-Zero glanced up at the ceiling, yanking his arm away again. "Trust is earned; you have heard that, right?"

She tossed her head but did not answer. The strange expression was gone; in its place was haughty disinterest.

"Well, let me explain something to you, then," he said. "Breaking into Mr. Yen's house and kidnapping Smoke starts you out _way_ negative. As a ninja assassin, I don't trust people very easily, as you well know, so you get to work yourself up by tiny increments. Start counting. Maybe after a few years of spotless behavior, you can make it back to zero."

He turned to leave, and this time, she didn't stop him.

* * *

"Don't you just _hate_ that guy?" asked Kung Lao. "Taking planet after planet, never asking, never letting up. Making bald-faced invasions one year, and then the next, sneaking around while the cosmic furies are unbalanced and slipping in a platoon of mutants to _slaughter_ people he doesn't have the _guts_ to face like a man."

Liu Kang stood, arms crossed, staring in a full-length mirror, face getting progressively redder.

"And don't even get me started on this resurrection thing," said Kung Lao. "You killed him fair and square! Where does he get off thinking he can come back? It's like he can't even admit that he might be defeated. I'm sure he has some big excuse, like he had food poisoning, or the ground was too wet, or the sun was in his eyes. But concede to a rematch? Oh, no, you're probably going to have to chase him down and _make_ him fight you. And with no one else around, you can _bet_ he's going to cheat; it would be just like him. Instead of facing you like a man, he'll try to call on the help of some necromancer like—"

* * *

Sorceress Ennir sat at a table in her tower, kicking her feet against her chair leg and tapping the sharp end of her quill on the table, making little black gouge marks, as she considered whether there was anything she needed to add to the latest entry in her experiment journal.

The subject of her experiment, whom she called Ermac, rested complacently where she had left him. Not even the _boom_ and _crunch_ of her door slamming open and catching a Shadow Priest against the wall with deadly force was enough to shake him.

"Ah, Kahn," she said, making one last mark in her journal with a flourish, "it's not often one sees you in one's own abode."

"You gave me a note too interesting not to follow up on," he rumbled.

"That's true."

"Then why haven't you?"

"Dear Kahn," she said, standing up, "I've been busy."

"Busy doing what?"

"Busy examining Number Two. Testing out his powers for you."

"Number Two," Kahn scoffed. "I look forward to the day he finally does something for me instead of uselessly hanging around in your—"

Ennir let out a giggle when Kahn's sudden perception of just how accurate he was momentarily struck him speechless.

"What magic is this?" he demanded, stepping forward and examining Ermac. The red-clad ninja with three Mandalorian souls inside was stuck to the wall, halfway to the ceiling, motionless.

"Gravity."

"Ah, the portal maker," Kahn realized with disgust. "How long is he going to stay up there?"

Ennir shrugged. "I don't know. That's the point. It could be some time, though: his power is so strong that your little earthquake didn't even jostle him." She plopped onto one of her divans. "Now, what is your business with me?"

"You claim to know where Sindel is."

"I do."

"Then you have had communication with Vendetta?"

"Vendetta?" She rubbed at a wrinkle in her robe. "Why would he talk to me?"

"Then he hasn't been searching for Sindel?" Kahn crossed his arms. "He's our only ally on Earth, and he ignores us. He ought to be executed."

Ennir leaned back and twirled her hand in the air, playing with the thread connecting her to Ermac. "If he's your only ally on Earth, who is going to execute him?"

"Not important!" he thundered.

She pushed the palm of her raised hand toward him. "I do know where Sindel is, though."

He calmed a bit. "With the Mandalorians, you said."

"In their little town, yes."

"And her demeanor?"

"Docile, it seems."

Kahn punched his own palm viciously. "Then your spell is broken, and I have failed. _Curse_ that mutant; he killed Johnny Cage too soon."

"It's not the end, Kahn," Ennir said. "We just need to try a different tactic."

"Earth is protected from forceful invasions," Kahn said.

Ennir smiled tightly. There was a reason Kahn had needed an assistant like Shang Tsung. "We must combine our strengths to win this." She stood. "I know nothing of ruling a realm outwardly. You know nothing of ruling it secretly. _You_ can conquer the realms; _I_ will open them for you."

Kahn shook his head slowly. "That's not the game."

"Look," she snapped. "Do you want to win, or do you want me to tell the Demon Master about your failure right now?"

Kahn jumped forward and caught her throat in his hand, lifting her off her divan and squeezing threateningly. She had forgotten how fast that overgrown heap of muscle could move.

"Stop and think," she rasped, sucking desperately for air.

"What are you so worried about?" Kahn sneered. "That this was only a short reprieve and the Master won't bother resurrecting you again?"

"No, you twit," she managed. "I'll be back." She gasped. "And I'll tell."

He loosened his grip enough to let her take a deep breath.

"When I tell the Master you killed me, what will he do to you?"

Kahn dropped her. "I find it hard to believe you're concerned about my fate."

"Pay attention for once, Kahn," she chided, rubbing her throat. "You're a hairsbreadth from taking Earth, and I don't want to lose that any more than you do."

"A hairsbreadth?" he roared. "I see only failure."

"But the plan can still work with a little deception. The atrocities Sindel commits that cause Earth to open itself to you and beg for your mercy do not necessarily have to be her own."

"What are you saying?"

"I have had word from Number Six that the Mandalorian village is about to suffer a terrible catastrophe. And how convenient it is that Sindel is already there."

Kahn stared at her for a moment. "Number Six is on Earth?"

"What, Kahn, didn't you wonder where he had gone?"

"I don't wonder at the absence of someone no one can ever find."

"Then, yes," she said, "he is on Earth. And he is going to salvage the plan if we just give him a little time."

"It had better be a very little time," Kahn said. "The warriors are congregating in the arena right now. If we wait too long—"

A dull roar came up through the floor. Ennir stood again, stepping past Kahn, apprehension rising within her.

"What is it?" Kahn demanded.

"I don't believe it," was all Ennir could say.

* * *

Rain stood in the royal balcony overlooking the stadium and watched as the mutants entered one by one. The Centaurions filled the north side of the arena, while the Shokans filled the south side. The mutants filed in between, actually bothering to form something like lines. They were meant to be a buffer zone separating the Centaurions and Shokans, to try to keep pre-war casualties down around the rate they expected once they actually entered the battlefield.

He suppressed the urge to sigh. If all his soldiers were as well-disciplined as the Shadow Priests, he could lead them to conquer anything. But perhaps that was unfair. The Shadow Priests had been created to be nothing but servants and had never exhibited anything resembling personality, independence, or desire.

Rain would settle for all his soldiers being as disciplined as the mutants, who at least knew how to behave when it was absolutely required of them, though they avoided it whenever it wasn't. But instead, he was shackled with the Shokans and the Centaurions and their eternal, unrestrainable blood-feud. Using Shokan and Centaurion troops was like throwing bees at his enemies and _hoping_ more of them stung his enemies than himself.

Even the Shokan and Centaurion leaders squabbled constantly, wasting time and resources, and for that reason, he had relegated them to the arena floor rather than let them stand on the balcony with him. They had threatened him with their much greater capacities for force to try to get their way, but that had never worked before, so why should it work now that the will of Ennir backed his every move?

Coming up the stairs to the balcony was a mutant escorted by two palace guards. The mutant gave his people's exaggerated version of a bow, which, with all the arm-waving, usually terrified palace occupants. They would laugh about the silly rituals of primitives afterwards to cover their fear, not realizing, as Rain did, that the bow was the mutants' mocking of the silly rituals of courtiers.

As the mutant stood to attention, Rain saw the painted plus sign near his collar. As he had expected, this was one of the mutants' quartermasters. He held a board with a stack of papers attached to it on a ring, and Rain realized who he was. Only one group of mutants had yet to turn in their papers.

"I should have you chained and whipped for your insolence," Rain said. "You have not only intentionally sabotaged our efforts to prepare for this war, but you have terrorized a highly ranked member of our society. I don't suppose you have any excuses."

The mutant shrugged. "Next time don't send your doxy."

"If we weren't directly preparing for the invasion, I _would_ have you chained and whipped," Rain said. "For days."

The mutant just shrugged again, looking bored, and Rain bit back another reproof. Making idle threats to the mutants would only encourage them to further misbehavior.

"Hand it over," said Rain, holding out one hand.

The mutant complied with another silly bow, then turned to leave.

"You're not dismissed," Rain said.

The mutant aborted his turn, standing at attention again as Rain started to flip through the pages on the board, ensuring that this time he got what he needed—it was too late to be useful, but obedience was always critical.

"It's all there," said the mutant, clearly anxious to get off the balcony.

"Oh, and I can trust you?" asked Rain, still flipping.

"Look around you," said the mutant. "If you can't trust us, who can you trust?"

Rain paused his flipping and grimaced. He looked up into the mutant's eyes, and the mutant met his gaze evenly. After several seconds, Rain jerked his head. "All right. You can go."

The mutant bowed again, then hopped off the side of the balcony, landing on the stairs ten feet below and springing down them toward the arena floor. The palace guards shouted and jumped after him. One hit the stairs with a curse, falling backward onto his rear and clutching his sprained ankle. The other hit and kept tumbling.

Rain shook his head, still flipping pages. If he had to conquer with the palace guards, he might as well take rabbits instead. At least the Shokans and the Centaurions could fight, even if they had no judgment about whom to fight.

All the required documentation was in the papers on the board, as promised, neatly organized, and Rain pushed back his smile even though his mask would have covered it. Who indeed? The Shokans and Centaurions couldn't even _do_ paperwork, let alone do it with the class of that mutant.

He flipped to the last page to add his signature, approving the documentation before passing it off to go to the archives. But the last page wasn't what he expected, and the urge to smile vanished immediately.

The page was covered in juvenile drawings, mostly stick figures. But they were clearly mutants, blades raised in victory, as a ninja Rain could only assume to be himself lay on the ground in a black, exaggerated pool of blood, a woman in an almost nonexistent dress burned at the stake, and Shao Kahn lolled in a large pot with little stars and spirals above his head.

Rain looked up just in time to see the cloaks all the mutants had been wearing hit the air, filling his view of the arena.


	25. Chapter Twenty Three

**Transposition**  
by Nyohah

**Chapter Twenty-Three**

* * *

The sun was rising when Sub-Zero led his group to the manhole that served as the entrance to Lin Kuei headquarters. Vendetta still had groups of Lin Kuei patrolling the town, keeping its citizens cowering indoors, and Sub-Zero and the others had run into one of the patrols.

It didn't have a chance.

They left the ninjas lying on the street unconscious. Such a large group of intruders wasn't going to go unnoticed very long anyway, and they would be inside Lin Kuei headquarters by the time the ninjas woke up.

They dropped down the manhole onto the mud pile one by one, spreading out in the short length of corridor between a plain metal door on the right and a heavy wooden door on the left.

"_This_ is it?" Chat asked, looking at the mud on her shoes with distaste.

"Yes," said Sub-Zero's father a little sadly, looking around. "You should have seen it in its day."

"No piles of mud, then," said Mr. Yen.

"And these corridors, they gleamed."

"Yeah, okay," said Sub-Zero. "Enmity, open the door."

She approached the heavy ceremonial door on the left and hit it with a large burst of flame. The door slid open silently, revealing an empty, darkened hallway beyond.

"This looks suspicious," said Mr. Yen.

"It's just the VIP hallway," said Sub-Zero.

"It's always like this," Enmity assured them.

"And it's the fastest way to Vendetta."

Mr. Yen shrugged, and Sub-Zero shoved past Enmity and into the doorway. He led them down the hall until they reached the first intersection. Then he turned to Sonya, Jax, and Mr. Yen.

"Are you ready to go off on your own?"

Sonya just raised her pistol, pointing it at the ceiling.

"I've been dying to give these a try," Jax said, shaking his metal-plated arms.

Nausea twisted Sub-Zero's stomach. Jax must have seen it on his face because the big man shrank back a little, relaxing his metal arms.

"We should get going," he said, more to Sonya than Sub-Zero.

"Yes," said Mr. Yen who was, as far as Sub-Zero could tell, unarmed. "Follow me."

The three of them set off, heading for the laboratory Sub-Zero had described.

"Take care, my old friend," said Sub-Zero's father, raising his sword in a salute.

Mr. Yen turned back to them long enough to return the salute with a slight nod, then continued his turn to complete the circle and disappeared down the corridor on the right.

"Vendetta is that way, right?" asked Sub-Zero's mother, gesturing down the corridor to the left with her bladed staff.

Sub-Zero barely stopped himself from asking how she knew, remembering that she also had known the ship intimately long before it was Lin Kuei headquarters and could guess which room Vendetta had chosen for his own.

He nodded once, and his mother swung her blade around to point down the hallway continuing straight from the way they came. "We will go this way, then, and try to stay out of your way." She took off down the hallway at a light jog.

Honor suddenly came into view, appearing centimeters in front of Sub-Zero's face. He flinched backward and smacked his head into the wall behind him.

=Do not worry, Li Nei Jen,= it mewled loudly, =we will not let any harm come to Yuen Ming.=

It vanished, leaving behind Enmity, Chat, and his father's questioning looks.

Sub-Zero felt a headache coming on. His mother and Honor deserved each other.

Enmity turned to Sub-Zero and gestured down the hallway to the left. "Like Li Ming said, Vendetta's room is this—"

"I know where it is," Sub-Zero said, pushing off the wall and leaving them behind.

* * *

Tanya leaned against the wall, well down the hall from the entrance to the hag witch's tower, staring at the door. She didn't know how much courage she would have when it came to it, but she had to try.

It was disgusting, the very thought. The hag witch was old and wrinkly and hideous. The thought of her yellowed, papery skin sent spiders crawling down Tanya's spine. But she _was_ a witch, and if she had witched Rain right into her bed, Tanya had to know so she could rescue him.

But by the same logic, Tanya couldn't barge into the witch's tower and confront her directly. She'd be turned into a fern or something to keep her love for Rain from breaking the spell. That's what always happened in stories.

Besides, Shao Kahn had gone into the tower, and Tanya preferred to forget he existed. She certainly wasn't going to cause a fuss in front of him.

Tanya would count to two hundred, and if they were both still in the tower, she would go home and try again the next day. She couldn't just stand in the hallway forever; someone would think she'd gone crazy. She was amazed it hadn't happened already, anyway, with the Shadow Priests lurking underneath her floor all day.

She was on one hundred sixty-three and starting to get annoyed at the commotion coming from the troops in the arena when Kahn stomped out of the tower, the hag witch hurrying after him. They separated before they were out of view, Kahn heading toward the arena, probably to shut up the troops, while the hag witch headed instead for Kahn's throne room, probably to continue laying whatever illicit spell had caused Kahn to go up into the tower in the first place.

Well, that was unfortunate. That meant _Tanya_ had to go into the tower. She hesitated, her breathing shallow, trying to come up with a good reason this opportunity wasn't valid. But the hag witch left the tower rarely, and if Tanya wanted any chance of getting Rain back, she had to take this one.

She slipped out of her shoes to keep from making noise on the stone floors and picked them up with one hand. With one last glance down the hallway where Kahn and the hag witch had disappeared, Tanya hurried across and into the entrance to the tower.

The antechamber of the tower was unoccupied, and she continued on to the stairs, climbing two flights until she reached the top room.

She eased the door open a crack and peered in. The first thing she saw was a Shadow Priest, standing in the far corner of the room, and she pulled away from the door, covering her face with her free hand.

No, she had to continue. Rain was counting on her.

She opened the door a little more. The Shadow Priest didn't move. She stepped all the way into the chamber, and still the Shadow Priest didn't move. But she saw something even more terrifying: three more Shadow Priests in other corners of the room and the splattered remains of one off to her left, behind the door. She grimaced and opened the door the rest of the way to block it from view.

She glimpsed another bit of red and looked toward it despite herself, not really wanting to see more carnage but unable to restrain her urge to glance toward it.

Spread-eagled on the wall, well above the floor, looking like someone had pinned him there, was a man in a red ninja costume.

Tanya squeaked and jumped backward. Her noise and movement seemed to rouse the Shadow Priests stationed in each corner of the room, and they began to very slowly bob toward her.

She took a step backward, staring up at the man on the wall. How many men were under the witch's spell? Rain had told her that the name Succubus, by which the hag witch had been known as long as Tanya could remember, was a misnomer, but for the first time in her life, Tanya was starting to doubt him. It was like the floor falling out from under her.

And underneath lurked Shadow Priests.

The more immediate danger came from the ones still slowly, gently, but inexorably floating toward her from the corners of the room.

She put one hand on her heart and tried to force deep breaths. Spinning in circles, she glanced at each of the Shadow Priests, trying to gauge whether she should just make her break as soon as possible or whether she could do the daring thing: get around them, then avoid them while quickly searching the room for evidence of the hag witch's exploits.

On her third turn, a dark spot on the table near the center of the room caught her eye. She stopped turning long enough to see what it was.

A small book, bound in black leather.

She lunged for it, Shadow Priests momentarily forgotten as she couldn't believe her luck. Flipping it open, she saw handwritten Edenian and knew it was what she had thought and exactly what she wanted: a journal, undoubtedly full of salacious details like Tanya's own journal.

She grabbed the book in her empty hand and fled, shrieking when she narrowly dodged one Shadow Priest and almost tripping down the stairs when she slammed the door behind her.

* * *

When the nomads pulled off their robes and flung them in the air, there was a _whuff_ of displaced air and then, for a full second, silence as the robes floated in the air like party favors.

And then—Kitana couldn't believe the din. The Centaurions and Shokans charged, converging on the nomads, and she thought she could hear wisps of Rain's voice, shouting orders, tinny against the sounds of the battle.

She had just pulled out her fans when a female Shokan reached her, swinging at her with her two left fists. Kitana dodged to the side, raising her fans, still unopened, into a high guard position.

Djurash was suddenly in front of her, then past her, his arm around her waist. "No time to fight," he hissed, lugging her physically out of the path of the overhand strike she'd been trying to block.

It was fine for him to say that, but without fighting, they wouldn't make it five seconds. Djurash extended his arm blades and caught the next strike a Shokan sent their way, spearing a massive forearm. The Shokan roared. Kitana ducked under another fist the size of her head and tossed her fan up into the Shokan's face, causing him to flinch backward as the blades sliced across his chin and throat, missing serious arteries but drawing blood. She reached out with her mind and pulled the fan back to her hand.

Djurash had ripped his blade out and taken several steps backward. Kitana hastily retreated after him, trying to stay almost back to back. The Shokans kept coming, but the other nomads swarmed in Kitana's wake, drawing the Shokans' attention. Djurash sliced toward any Shokan who came too close. Kitana kept throwing her fans, knowing she had no chance of standing up to a Shokan in a brawl.

It took about five minutes, but working together, they finally made it to the side of the arena, slipping through one of the servants' doors. Kitana took a deep breath, bending over. Djurash also took a moment, retracting his arm blades and placing his hands over his diaphragm as he leaned back against the wall.

After a few seconds of breathing, Djurash straightened. "Which way is she?"

Kitana pointed, and they took off at a fast walk.

* * *

Ennir paused in front of the huge doors leading into Shao Kahn's throne room. The dozen Shadow Priests she had summoned floated to a stop around her, like waves gently lapping against the door. Four of them met the door and pushed; it creaked open slowly.

As soon as the gap was wide enough, Ennir stepped inside and looked around.

Empty.

So the Demon Master had finally gone back to his own throne room, losing his fear of attack just in time for the mutant rebellion to start. Ennir had lived long enough to know that sort of irony was just the way of things and not to worry over it.

She marched down the throne room toward Kahn's dais. The smaller private room the Demon Master had claimed was accessible only from a tapestry-covered door behind the throne. When at last she reached the back of the room, she pushed the tapestry aside with one hand and pushed the modest door open with the other.

Empty.

Ennir froze. She had scarcely ever seen the Demon Master leave his dais, let alone go wandering off on his own.

She needed Ermac. And more Shadow Priests. Many more.

The Shadow Priests she had brought hissed in unison, announcing the presence of an unsanctioned portal.

And an army of mutants would have been nice.

* * *

Vendetta's constant anger was exhausting. As tiring as it was for Noob Saibot to deal with, he couldn't imagine how Vendetta handled it.

The cyberninja automation had been successful, but that hadn't improved his mood. He seemed to be angry at Noob Saibot because of their conversation earlier, since he kept looking behind him, murder in his eyes, as he stomped through the halls of his clan's headquarters.

Noob Saibot thought that was a little childish; after all, _he_ was the one who had been stabbed.

Of course, dogging Vendetta's heels did nothing to ease his anger, but Noob Saibot couldn't trust him to keep proper focus, and the only solution he could see was constant supervision and liberal threats.

They were close to Vendetta's lair but not yet in view of the door when they heard a commotion.

Ninjas raising the alarm, their voices cut off suddenly. Scuffling sounds and thuds. Shouts of aggression and pain.

"Intruders," Vendetta said simply, for once keeping his voice quiet. He lowered his head and began to march forward.

Noob Saibot dashed around him, faster than any man, and put a hand against Vendetta's chest, stopping him. "I'll take care of this. Guard your cyberninjas."

"It's that daughter of mine," he hissed. "It must be her. And her new _boyfriend_."

"Stop," said Noob Saibot, trying to keep calm. "You can't take them on alone."

"And you can?"

"They can't kill me."

"Is that right?" asked Vendetta, disgusted, glancing at Noob Saibot's chest, where the hole had been. "Fine."

He stalked away, back the direction they had come.

Noob Saibot stood in place for a few seconds, listening to the intruders fight. Then, glancing behind him and ensuring Vendetta was out of sight, Noob Saibot moved backward, away from the fighting and into the shadows.

* * *

Creating a portal wasn't easy, but directing it where you wanted it to go was the trickiest part. The portal creator had to have a very strong image of the destination in mind to have any hope of accuracy. And since Mulan had never been to Outworld, she had to get the image by description from someone else. Yuan had done all right the first time with the striking vine courtyard he remembered, but there was a chance that was guarded now, and they needed somewhere else. Ching came up with a place in the palace she was fairly certain would be private and, though unguarded by Outworld troops, easily guarded by one of the Earth warriors. Even better, three of them had been there. So Ching, Yuan, and Tung all described the medical room by the arena, going through it thoroughly, adding any details they could think of, and trying not to contradict each other until Mulan nodded, closed her eyes, and got to work.

But far from being quiet and secluded where they landed, the commotion was incredible. Yuan jumped out of the portal and landed in a panic, whirling around, trying to locate the source of the noise. Ching was next out of the portal, and, hearing the noise, she went to the door and carefully looked out. She apparently saw nothing, for as Kung Lao emerged from the portal, closely followed by Liu Kang, Ching slipped out of the room.

Yuan moved to the door. Ching had gone to the nearest intersection and was looking around. He could see the wall of the arena, but the long sides of the arena bore no doorways, so he couldn't see in. He watched as Ching crossed the hallway and leaned one ear against the wall. Almost immediately she pulled away and turned. Seeing him, she nodded.

Yuan turned back to the face the room. Lundiy, Mistral, Tung, and Sindel had arrived; they were all there, then.

"The riot—or whatever it is—is in the arena," he explained.

"I wonder what's going on," said Kung Lao.

"I don't really care as long as it's distracting."

Lundiy was looking at the assorted horrors on the wooden shelves along the wall, one hand gently holding Sindel's arm. "This place is creepy."

"An evil hag uses it to practice medicine," Liu Kang sniffed. Kung Lao punctuated the statement with finger quotes.

"Don't forget that old hag is one of our main targets," Ching warned, stepping inside the room.

"Not mine." Liu Kang left.

"I don't intend to have bad manners," said Tung, "but Liu Kang is right that we shouldn't waste time."

Yuan pointed over his shoulder at the door. "Take a left. You'll see a corridor that seems to go straight forever, all the way to the other end of the palace. Follow it all the way, and then take the door on the left, into the tower."

"Easy enough," Tung answered. She took a deep breath, and the two Kitsune guards and Sindel followed her out of the room.

Kung Lao flopped onto a table. "Good luck."

"Uh, thanks," said Yuan. He turned to Ching and pointed toward the arena. "Shortest way is this way."

"Let's go around and avoid Liu Kang."

"Good idea."

They went left out of the door, following the group of four women up the long corridor for a short time before ducking into a doorway leading toward the center of the palace. They walked along a balcony overlooking the first floor of the palace until it intersected the main hall of the palace, which linked Shao Kahn's throne room with his personal entrance to the arena.

Ching glanced to the left, toward the arena, then turned back to Yuan and nodded. They hurried through the hall toward the throne room, Yuan glancing backward to see Liu Kang already fighting Shao Kahn, far down the hall by the arena entrance. Apparently Kahn had been on his way to the arena when Liu Kang, on his way to the throne room, had intercepted him.

Someone had left the throne room doors ajar, and Yuan and Ching both slipped through them without having to inch them open much farther.

The throne room was empty.

"Is this where he's supposed to be?" Yuan asked.

"There's another room in the back." Ching pointed to the wall beyond Kahn's throne. "He might be there."

They strode down the throne room and up the stairs onto the dais where the throne sat. Ching moved around behind the throne, pushed aside a tapestry, and opened a hidden door, leading Yuan inside.

The smaller room was also empty.

"This isn't good," Yuan said. "How are we supposed to find him?"

Ching wasn't really paying attention to him. She was staring at another tapestry on the wall, one arm tucked to her ribs, the other hand at her throat. But she wasn't in any distress; she was just thinking.

He didn't have to wait very long before she suddenly turned her head away from the tapestry.

"He'd go underground. Find a stairwell."

* * *

Vendetta's door was the fourth ceremonial door Sub-Zero and the others encountered. Enmity had stepped forward and opened the three previous doors with a concentrated blast of her powers. This time she hesitated.

After a few seconds, Sub-Zero turned his head toward her and waved her forward.

She took a small step forward but didn't raise her arms. "I don't know if I can open this," she said finally.

"What?"

"Applying my powers to this only alerted him to my presence. I think he has to open it."

Sub-Zero clenched his jaw for a moment and then relaxed it with effort. "Try."

She did. Nothing happened.

"We'll have to break it down," said Sub-Zero's father. He stepped toward the door and stabbed it with his sword.

It left a mark in the thick wooden door. But not a very big one.

"I have dynamite," said Chat.

"No," said Sub-Zero and his father.

"Can't she burn it down?"

"It's obviously been fireproofed," said Sub-Zero irritably, rubbing his hand on the surface. "We'll have to weather it."

"How?" asked Chat, settling onto the ground.

"The same way nature does. Just...faster." He raised his arms and coated the door in ice.

Almost immediately, Enmity hit the door with another wave of fire, melting the ice and subjecting the door to an extreme temperature change.

"Good," said Sub-Zero, inspecting the door and seeing that it didn't look quite as polished as before. "Next time let the ice melt a little more so the water can soak in."

They continued alternately attacking the door, his father wedging his sword into the cracks that began to form on its surface, chipping away pieces until, fifteen minutes later, and sooner than Sub-Zero had hoped, they had a hole in the door big enough to check the room.

Empty.

"He's not there," Sub-Zero said emotionlessly.

His father pushed the tip of sword through the hole, checking the corners of the room on its reflection. He removed the sword, shaking his head.

Sub-Zero tried very hard not to lose it. They had showed their hand but had not cornered Vendetta, and now he had all the warning and freedom he would need to set up an impenetrable trap or even run away.

They had failed, no thanks to Vendetta's useless daughter. Sub-Zero turned to her, fists itching to take it out on her.

She also turned, looking down the hallway. With sudden determination, she started walking away.

Sub-Zero jumped forward, grabbed her shoulders, and threw her into the wall.

"Wait!" she shouted after her face had bounced off the wall.

"Wait?" Sub-Zero demanded. "Wait for what? For him to come back?"

"Wait and give me a chance to speak," Enmity spat.

Sub-Zero crossed his arms.

Enmity straightened. "I know where else he might be."

* * *

Li Yuen Ming walked the halls of her old flagship for the first time in almost twenty-five years. There were changes everywhere, walls tarnished, scrolls hung, rooms cannibalized to serve very different roles than they had been designed for. It was a vain attempt to disguise the metal and bare functionality of the vessel with wood and ceremony, trying to create the proper ambience, but all it really succeeded in was giving the place an off feeling, like the pieces didn't fit together quite right and trying to make them had warped the picture.

As if she needed more aid in feeling nervous.

"Is it here?" she whispered to Honor.

=Somewhere,= it mewled, almost mournfully. =We cannot narrow its location.=

She looked at him surprise. "Why not?"

=Too alien.=

"Alien how?"

The image of the white-clad ninja slowly shook its head. =We cannot figure out what it is.=

"Mmm," said Ming. "I hope that doesn't mean we can't kill it."

She stopped and looked around. Vendetta—or others under Vendetta's orders—had knocked out eighty percent of the lights, leaving the place in a patchwork of shadows. The last few cross-corridors she had passed were blocked off with those large wooden doors she couldn't open, though perhaps Honor could sense and replicate the mechanism if it became necessary. She must have been walking along the divide that separated the bulk of the ship from what her son had called the VIP area. But if Honor couldn't find the shadow ninja anyway, it wasn't too hobbling not to have free access to chase him down.

"We'll have to lure him out," Ming said. Then she shouted, "Noob Saibot! Come out and fight us!"

In response to her cry, two ninjas came running down one of the corridors toward her, their hands raised in guard position. She felt a tingle in the air, like one of them was preparing to use his elemental powers.

When they saw her, they stopped dead. "Mrs. Li!" one of them gasped. "You shouldn't be here." They dropped their hands, and the tingle of power faded away.

"I'm hunting a demon that's been hiding here," she explained, hefting her bladed staff.

The ninjas exchanged glances. "Uh, we can't allow that, Mrs. Li. Please come with us." One of them reached toward her arm.

She raised her bladed staff, pointing the tip of the blade at the ninja's throat. He froze, and the other one jumped.

"Listen to me, boys," she said, glancing back and forth between their faces, making eye contact with each in turn. She remembered the voice of command even though she had never been very good at it. "You should get out of here. Now. Go home to your families."

For a few seconds, they didn't move, looking at each other, then at Mrs. Li, then at her weapon, and back. Ming could feel Honor—invisible to them—move beside her, preparing to incapacitate one of the ninjas if they should attack.

Suddenly the ninja whose neck wasn't threatened by her blade dropped into a respectful bow. "Yes, ma'am!" He straightened. His associate backed away from Ming's blade two slow steps before turning. They left, hurrying down the hall in the direction of the exit instead of back the way they had come.

Ming watched them go, and Honor zipped ahead of her. =The way forward is clear of other ninjas.=

"Good," Ming said, following him. If she remembered correctly, the captain's stateroom had been around here, adjoining the bridge but opening into a different hallway.

It took her less than a minute to reach it, and she immediately noticed that it had been emptied of everything that had been in it the last time she had seen it except for a long, narrow table at the far end of the room. But that only made the space larger, and with a weapon like hers, she needed space. Her comparative weakness also made fighting in close quarters a bad idea. The room was perfect.

"Noob Saibot!" she shouted again. "I claim my right to vengeance for Rah Cai Yue!"

Nothing happened. She looked at Honor. It shook its head.

"Noob Saibot! Number Six! Come and defend your honor!"

Nothing happened. She jammed the blunt end of her bladed staff on the ground and leaned on it, frowning.

"At least when you murdered my friend in Edenia," she said, remembering Yuan's lecture on the Number system from the previous night, "you were on your own turf. Here you're interfering in ours, and you have no business. Come out and fight or go back to Outworld and serve your Edenian master. Who is it that dominates the Edenians now? Is it Ennir, now that she seems to be back? Is she your mistress?"

A shadow in the hall shifted, the outline of a man detaching from it and moving through the doorway and into the room.

"Hello, Your Majesty," it whispered.

The door slammed shut behind it.


	26. Chapter Twenty Four

**Transposition**  
by Nyohah

**Chapter Twenty-Four**

* * *

They had travelled much deeper into Lin Kuei headquarters but had only passed two more ninjas—who had come from the opposite direction, raised their hands in surrender, and kept moving right past their group—when Enmity finally held up her hand, giving the signal to stop.

Just in front of her was an open doorway; a little farther down the hallway was another. Sub-Zero tugged on Enmity's arm, getting her to turn around. He raised his eyebrows.

She nodded once.

He turned around to face his father and Chat. He pointed to Chat, then at the wall by the door.

She gave him a thumbs-up.

He jerked his head toward the door, and Enmity and his father followed him inside.

It was a large semicircular room with huge tapestries lining the curving wall and rows of tables at the back of the room, near where they had entered.

Vendetta stood in the middle, near the curved wall. Two finished and functional cyberninjas flanked him, yellow on the left, red on the right.

Seeing them enter, Vendetta raised an arm and pointed at them, shouting, simply, "Kill!"

The cyberninjas sprang into action, charging forward.

Sub-Zero ran to meet them. They closed with him, on a collision course, the angles of their paths perfectly symmetrical around Vendetta.

Sub-Zero skipped one step, hopping forward on one foot, turning his body ninety degrees—and slipped right between them.

Nothing stood between him and Vendetta.

* * *

Kitana and Djurash had managed to work their way to the south side of the arena before exiting it, so it was a small matter to make their way further south and much further east, dodging panicked servants, until they found a stairwell reasonably close to the entrance to Ennir's tower. Only slightly out of breath from running up two flights of stairs, they emerged into the third-floor corridor right in the middle of a group of four strange women.

Kitana shrieked and jumped backward; her embarrassment was lessened by the fact that the shorter of the two dark-haired women did as well. Kitana removed her hand from her heart, holding up her fans and looking the women over, trying to judge who they were and if they were a threat.

"Katana?" asked the one who looked Chinese.

"Kitana," she answered, then recognized the woman. "It's you! Are the other Earth warriors here?" She reached over and pushed down on Djurash's arm, lowering one of his blades. He reluctantly followed with the other arm.

The woman nodded. "Some of them. We're going to try to fight the witch—"

And then Kitana saw who the fourth woman was, and she didn't hear the speaking woman anymore.

"Mother?"

The other three women just looked at her.

She stepped forward and placed a hand on Sindel's shoulder. "This woman is my mother."

"Oh, that's right," said the Chinese-looking woman.

The taller of the two dark-skinned women bent down on one knee; this brought the highest tips of her rather alarming antlers to Kitana's eye level. "Princess Kitana of Edenia? We are your servants, the Kitsune. I am Mistral, and she is Lundiy."

Kitana didn't particularly care at the moment. Ignoring them, she placed her other hand on Sindel's other shoulder. "Mother?" she asked, looking into the woman's solid-white eyes. "Mother, can you hear me?"

Sindel didn't answer. She didn't even move.

"Careful," said the shorter of the two dark-skinned women—Lundiy. "Sometimes she gets...dangerous."

"I saw her," Kitana said softly. "Months ago. She was _evil_."

"She was," said the antlered woman—Mistral—who had risen again and crossed her arms.

"Sometimes she's evil," answered Lundiy. "We try not to stimulate her too much."

"But you're taking her to a _fight_?" Kitana demanded.

"We had to bring her here," said the Chinese-looking woman, "to stop the invasion."

"We already did that," said Djurash, his arms also crossed. He seemed to be in a staring match with Mistral.

"Okay, okay, fine," Kitana said, waving her hands by her head. "But she can't come with us to fight Ennir."

"Who's going to look after her?" Lundiy moved toward Sindel protectively, fighting with Kitana over space to stand.

"You can." Kitana reluctantly let go of Sindel.

"No," said Mistral. "We are Kitsune. We defeated Ennir before. We have to fight her."

Kitana looked pleadingly at the Chinese-looking woman. "What was your name?"

"Tung," she answered shortly. "And I want another shot at the witch. Justice always has an opening against evil like her. I know I can bring her down." She stopped suddenly and shifted her weight, glancing guiltily at Sindel. "And I don't trust her. If she freaks out and tries to kill me..."

"Okay, fine," Kitana said, her voice getting screechy. "Djurash, you'll have to take her."

"What?"

"Please, I have to fight Ennir and Rain; they killed my friend, and she—"

"No!" Djurash snarled. "My people have a right—"

"Please!" Kitana shouted, tears coming to her eyes. "We don't have time to fight about this."

For a moment, Djurash glared at her, towering above her, and she thought he was going to cut her head off and be done with it. But he snatched Sindel's arm, yanking her toward him viciously. "I'll get some of my men to look after her. Then I'm coming back."

He dragged Sindel down the hall after him, and although Kitana could practically see the bruises already rising in her mother's colorless skin, Kitana called after him, "Thank you."

He turned his head to glare at her one more time. "Don't kill Ennir before I get back."

"No promises," Kitana answered, looking at the determined faces around her.

* * *

Kung Lao sat cross-legged on the examination table in the medical room, his wrists on his knees. The portal still swirled off to his left. Sitting in the closed room, he could feel the portal affect the air in ways he hadn't noticed before, like it was actively trying to suck him in. He kept inching away from it, but there wasn't much table left.

He could still hear something going on in the arena. He listened for every noise, trying to figure out what was going on, but the sounds were too muffled to distinguish.

His wrists twitched.

He wanted to go and have a look, but he had promised to protect the portal, and it was necessary, after all.

He kicked his legs off the table, let them dangle for a moment, then refolded them.

Was this what Kahn's troops considered practice? Had Kitana done something? Had they figured out the Earth warriors were coming and gone berserk?

He flipped his hands over, studying the creases in his palms, until a particularly loud crash sounded, and he almost jumped off the table in reflex.

Oh, what the hell. He could always teleport back into the room to guard the portal if something happened.

He straightened his legs and pushed with his arms, propelling himself off the table and toward the door. A quick glance outside revealed no one in the hallway, so he slipped outside and tried to quietly close the door, but the portal pulled it shut more fiercely than he expected.

He winced and looked around, but with all the noise coming from the arena, it was unlikely anyone could have noticed. He headed for the nearer end of the arena, where several doors opened into the stands, above the well-guarded entrance to the palace a floor below. He leaned into the nearest doorway, holding his hat behind him so he wouldn't show a foot of hat before he could see.

His eyes widened as he took in the sight. Kahn's troops were fighting amongst themselves, but it certainly wasn't practice. It was a vicious, all-out, three-way slaughter. Shokans and Centaurions he had heard liked to fight, but the mutants were in there, too, taking every opportunity to wound and kill, working in teams to take down creatures much larger, stronger, and harder to kill than they were. Kahn's armies, taking care of themselves. And to top it all off, opposite from him, through the doorways leading off of Kahn's balcony, he could see Liu Kang and Shao Kahn, already facing off in battle, Liu Kang holding his own.

What brilliant luck.

But maybe not for him, he realized, as a Centaurion caught sight of him and bellowed. He started to back away, but before he could get out of sight, a Centaurion was responding to the alert, charging through the arched doorway, coming right toward him.

He _could_ teleport back to the medical room, but if the Centaurion went kicking in doors looking for him, there wasn't any way Kung Lao could hope to stop it from running over him and through the portal, not in such a small area.

He had to stand and fight. Or, more intelligently, dodge and fight.

* * *

Li Wei Yong blocked the yellow robot's hammer strike on his sheathed sword. He had one end in each hand and held it horizontally, like a staff. The impact jarred all the way down to his shoulders, and he felt his age.

He was, reluctantly, beginning to acknowledge the worth of these robots. It was crazy to build them, yes, but it wasn't stupid. They were a little clunky, like they weren't used to their bodies yet, and the fighting style was so bland that he wondered whether there had been memory loss in the brain during the automation process or Vendetta had just chosen impressively boring ninjas to experiment on.

But they were very effective. They were heavily armored without slowing or tiring, and he only had to be hit once to know he didn't even want to _block_ their blows with his own flesh.

Further into the room, where he could see if he just turned his head a bit to the left, his son was fighting the man he'd brought his sword to use on.

There was a flash of yellow in his peripheral vision, and he bent over backward as far as he could, so the punch just barely missed smashing all his teeth in. He let go of one end of his sword, leaned forward again, and jabbed the free end directly into the robot's neck. To any person, it would have been an incapacitating if not fatal blow, even with the sword sheathed. The robot didn't even flinch, instead pivoting on one foot to send a kick toward Wei Yong's stomach. He tried to dodge, but it still caught him in the side, and he groaned and hobbled a couple of steps away.

There was a _whoosh_ and a sudden blast of heat, and then the red robot collided with the yellow robot. The red robot rolled farther, ending up closer to Wei Yong. The yellow robot quickly rose, but it ignored Wei Yong and charged toward Enmity, apparently judging her the greater threat. She dodged its first strike fluidly.

Wei Yong took a moment to wipe sweat off his forehead as the red robot smoldered on the ground. It gave one large twitch, and then pushed itself off the ground with its arms, climbing unsteadily to its feet. He took a quick step forward and hit the robot squarely in the breast plate with a side kick.

The robot tumbled back to the ground, but Wei Yong was the one who shouted in pain. That was not good for his knee. If he couldn't even hit his opponent without doing himself more damage, he didn't have many options left. Well, the fire had worked well enough, and he could conjure something more quickly devastating to electronics than fire.

As the red robot climbed to its feet again, Wei Yong reached into the air around him, feeling the energy potential and gathering it into one point. They were in a metal room, and ground was literally in all directions, so he felt the energy trying to pull away from him, but he wasn't hopelessly out of practice. He held tightly to the energy, keeping it contained until it had built up so strongly that it seriously threatened his control. Then he released it and was gratified to see the main shaft of the lightning bolt connect squarely with the top of the red robot's head. Sparks erupted all along its body, and it shuddered before collapsing face-first on the floor.

Of course, even Wei Yong had his limits, and offshoots of lightning sprouted in all directions, jumping into the metal walls and disappearing.

The fighting stopped as everyone stared at him. The glare on his son's face was especially deep. "What the hell?" he shouted, throwing an arm up so that Vendetta's attempted head-lock caught an arm as well. They stood there struggling, his son trying to free himself, Vendetta trying to exert the force to strangle him anyway.

Wei Yong gave the red robot one more glance and, seeing no movement, rushed toward Vendetta. He grabbed him by the hood, yanking it back off his head, ripping the mask free, and hauling the collar of the ninja suit up and back enough to begin to choke Vendetta.

Vendetta let go of Nei Jen with one arm to reach back and smack Wei Yong in the face. He was at the wrong angle to do any real damage, but the blow stung and caused Wei Yong to drop the hood anyway. Still, his son was able to twist out of Vendetta's hold, elbowing him in the face as he turned.

He completed the turn with one hard kick to Wei Yong's shin.

It wasn't an accident.

Wei Yong stumbled back, bending half over to clutch at his shin as his son and Vendetta clashed again.

Enmity's sudden shout of "Get over here!" broke through his litany of curses, and he looked over at her to see that rather than chasing one of the robots like a maniac, she was almost backed into the corner by the pair of them.

She was shouting at him.

He hobbled back across the room, grabbed the yellow robot by the wires that dangled out of the back of its head, and pulled it around in an arc, away from Enmity. At the apex of the swing, he gave it a good pushing kick to the back, sending it staggering away from him.

It charged back toward him almost immediately, but Wei Yong dodged, bending and sticking out his sword. The robot tripped and clanged headlong onto the floor. With a small smile to himself, Wei Yong glanced back at his son and Vendetta, watching as one his son's punches connected solidly with Vendetta's face. As Vendetta turned half away and bent half over from the punch, Nei Jen jumped onto Vendetta's back, catching _him_ in a headlock. But all Vendetta had to do was lean forward farther to tip Nei Jen back off and onto the ground on his back.

Wei Yong was still watching when he caught a kick to the back of the head.

* * *

The shadow ninja whirled, jerking his head up and down, looking at the closed metal door for half a second. Then he spun back to face Ming. Wisps of blackness trailed behind him.

"What do you think you're doing?" His voice was soft and airy, but the anger in it was still obvious.

"Trapping you," Ming answered simply.

"Got a death wish, have you?"

Ming didn't answer. She just raised her single-bladed staff in guard position, holding it horizontally in front of her chest.

The shadow ninja folded his hands behind his back and took a step slightly toward her but more to the right. "Well, here, unless I'm much mistaken, are the controls for this door."

He turned toward the wall, starting to reach out toward the controls, and Ming lunged forward, moving her grip down to the blunt end of her weapon and stabbing toward the shadow ninja.

He dodged gracefully to the side without turning to see her, and the tip of her blade crashed into the panel.

The shadow ninja leaned toward the controls. "You could have done a better job," he mocked. "They might still be functional."

Ming grunted and swung the far end of her staff toward him. He caught it just under the blade with the side of his forearm, and she hadn't had enough space to work up the momentum to make the blow knock him sideways. She pulled the blade away and closed with him instead.

He blocked four swings of her blade, but the ankle kick she layered under them went true. He jerked the affected foot backward, the movement pushing him toward the wall. Ming followed, and easily blocked his surprisingly weak punch, then cracked him in the forehead with the blunt end of her staff. She took a step backward to get the distance to give her blade a good swing, aiming to decapitate him.

He ducked and jumped into a forward roll. As Ming turned, he was already rising, facing her from the other side of the room.

She set her teeth and started to move forward, but he folded his hands behind his back again, and started to circle her.

"You can't have closed that door from where you were standing," he said.

"Who says I did?" Honor had triggered the door to close, but the shadow ninja didn't need to know about him.

"And yet there's no one else here, and there was no one in the hallway either."

Ming shrugged.

"An interesting puzzle. But you're the Mandalorian queen, and you had a pet Vyrenchi. He's here, isn't he, as your fail-safe?"

Ming stepped toward him and swung her bladed staff in a short rising arc. The shadow ninja dodged smoothly, not even bothering to take his hands away from his back, and suddenly he was around to her side and had kicked her in the hip.

She stumbled to the side and kept herself from falling by propping the blade of her staff on the ground.

When did he get so fast?

But he didn't immediately attack her again, instead adopting that infuriating stance and circling her again.

"What, are you afraid to fight me?" she demanded, raising her staff again.

The shadow ninja shrugged. "You're the Mandalorian queen."

"You already said that."

"But that's out of date, isn't it? You can't be the queen; you lost Mandalore."

Ming twitched, the small movement making the staff in front of her jerk obviously.

"That's right," said the shadow ninja, a laugh in his whisper. "You lost Mandalore. It was your fault, wasn't it? Your arrogance that pulled your people away from where they were really needed and got everyone killed."

"Shut up," Ming hissed. "You don't know what happened." She lunged toward him, skidding to a halt short of where he should have expected her, and threw her torso forward, sending the bladed tip of her staff toward him.

The shadow ninja sidestepped, and, with one hand, grabbed her staff and pulled her farther forward, slamming her into the wall.

Her forehead bounced off, and when she turned to protect herself against his next attack, she slid halfway down the wall in dizziness. But the shadow ninja was just looking at her again, and though she couldn't see his face under the mask, she got the impression he was smirking at her.

When did he get so strong?

Her nostrils flared, and she reached with her mind deep into the earth around the ship. Just a few feet from the hull, she found a large tree root and tugged at it with her mind, causing it to surge with growth, heaving forward, toward the center of the shadow ninja's chest.

It slammed into the hull and splintered, sending out shrills of pain in Ming's mind. She let out all her breath at once and forced herself back into a standing position.

"What a failure you were," the shadow ninja said calmly. "How very fortunate for us your sons take after you."

"Leave my sons out of this." She flexed her wrists, twisting her staff in her hands, trying to think of a good tactic.

"No," he answered. "I saw you with your younger son. I don't think there's anything in the world more precious to you than him."

"Is there something wrong with that?"

"No, it's admirable," he taunted. "Your sons are here to kill Vendetta and stop his evil plans. But these are my evil plans, too, and once I've killed you, I'll take care of your sad sons and then the Earth will follow."

Ming gritted her teeth and shook her head. "You're wrong. Yuan's not here. He's already foiled your plans, and you can't hurt him. Nothing else matters."

The shadow ninja stopped pacing. "Nothing? Nothing at all? Not even the other son I'm going to slaughter?"

The corner of Ming's mouth twitched.

The shadow ninja laughed. "Don't you even love your other son?"

She tightened her grip on her staff and took a hesitating step forward before pulling her foot back again.

"I can't believe it. No wonder he was such a good assassin."

Ming's tears were already spilling over. She shook her head furiously. "No, I loved him; I loved him."

"Oh, this is perfect." The shadow ninja nodded his head slowly. "The lady doth protest too much, methinks."

He darted forward, and before Ming could react, he had slammed the heel of his hand into her chin, snapping her head back. It was all she could do to twist her staff around, keeping him from getting in a second hit. She kicked toward his ankle, trying to make him back off, but he lifted his foot as she moved, catching her on the heel and pushing her ankle up. She lost her balance, and as she fell, the shadow ninja grabbed her staff. The fall ripped it out of her hands, and the shadow ninja tossed it to the side without a thought. It clattered on the ground.

The shadow ninja aimed a short, low-centered axe kick toward Ming's supine body, but she rolled away from the blow. As she was hurriedly pushing herself to her feet, the shadow ninja grabbed her braid and hauled her up.

"Having fun yet?" he asked, his face close to hers.

She bared her teeth, but the shadow ninja didn't pay her any attention, giving the back of her head a forceful shove. She stumbled forward and put her hands up to help stop herself from slamming headlong into the closed door.

She whirled instantly, trying to get off the defensive, but the shadow ninja was already halfway to her again. Then, a flash of white came in from the side, Honor cutting in to take control of the shadow ninja's physical energy, stopping the fight, saving her life.

The shadow ninja barely shuddered, and Honor was left behind where he had first entered the shadow ninja's body as the he finished his approach, picking Ming up with one hand.

=Sorry, Yuen Ming,= Honor whined. =We do not know its power source. Too alien.=

He was still talking as she flew through the air toward the other end of the room. She landed on her side on the far side of the table there, knocking it over as she continued the fall, landing headfirst on the ground. Her vision faded fast, but she thought she heard a sound like an explosion as she went out.

* * *

The four women headed down the hallway toward the witch's tower at a jog, Kitana in the lead and Tung just behind her, with the two Kitsune guards trailing them both, watching their backs. But apparently that was all the caution they were going to show, for when they reached the end of the hallway, Kitana threw the door open and charged in without a glance inside.

Tung followed more carefully, taking time to look around the room as Kitana raced for the stairs at the far side. The room was unoccupied, but tapestries adorned every wall. There could have been a hidden guard behind any one of them. Tung revolved slowly as she headed for the stairs, turning her head back and forth more quickly, trying to keep an eye on all the tapestries at once.

Her heel hit the bottom step and, with one last glance around the room, she turned and took the stairs two at a time.

There was a door at the top, but it hung open. Kitana had barely moved beyond the door and was half-crouched, her hands in fists at her sides. Tung slipped past her. There was another doorway on the other side, but the door was already open, and the witch stood framed in the archway.

Kitana leapt forward, pulling out her fans and opening them in one fluid motion.

The witch merely raised one hand and pushed it toward the side, and Kitana was diverted and slammed into the wall.

Tung unsheathed her own sword, but the witch wasn't paying her any attention. She turned her back, picking Kitana up off the floor with a jerk of her wrist. Tung pulled her sword back in preparation for a lunge at the witch's back. As she moved, she saw something in her peripheral vision, large and red and emerging from the stairway in a sprint. It slammed into her side, throwing her way off target and onto the floor. She landed on her left elbow and pain jolted down her arm.

Hissing at the pain, she rolled to her feet and faced the thing that had attacked her. He was a ninja dressed in red, one of his arms bleeding where her sword had nicked him. He stared at the sword warily, like he was afraid of it, like an animal.

More figures emerged from the stairway, floating monks in robes. There were about a dozen of them, far too many to take out quickly, but the Kitsune guards had arrived. Tung watched as they surveyed the situation, each of them briefly meeting Tung's eyes. The taller of the two lunged toward the Shadow Priests, while the shorter moved forward hesitantly.

Then the red ninja raised an arm, and the floor moved beneath Tung's feet.

* * *

Ching had never been on the first floor of Shao Kahn's palace before, but it wasn't quite as dungeon-like as she had hoped. The ceilings were low, and the walls were rough stone blocks, but they were _white_ stone blocks, which lent the place almost a glow.

Her instinct was to go lower, but they had yet to find a stairwell leading down. It was possible there _was_ no down, in which case, they were in the right place.

She and Yuan ran through the short, twisty corridors, trying to cover as much distance in as little time as possible while cutting off escape routes. It was a hopeless endeavor with only two people, especially two people who didn't split up, but it helped them form an efficient search pattern. The servants were also running through the corridors, spooked by what was going on in the arena, and sometimes they formed masses that she and Yuan had to break through, sometimes with a bit of force. They ran in the opposite direction from the servants, away from the commotion, away from anyone else, to the deepest, loneliest part of the palace.

And suddenly, there he was, backed into a corner, his white skin and white clothes almost camouflage against the walls.

And—Ching noticed, beginning to grin fiercely, as she and Yuan straightened from their sudden stop—he was completely terrified.


	27. Chapter Twenty Five

**Transposition**  
by Nyohah

**Chapter Twenty-Five**

* * *

Yuan had never heard the Demon Master speak, so when the short, pale, frail-looking creature finally did, he wasn't prepared and almost jumped backward.

*Come to try your luck?* he asked, not bothering to open his mouth. The voice carried no emotion, and the sound of it was thin, almost as frail as the body looked, but the way it slid into Yuan's brain as if it owned him gave him a chill.

Ching just crossed her arms. "There's no luck to it anymore. Not now that we're here together."

*So you think you know your gifts.*

"We do know."

*Unlikely.*

"I am very smart," Yuan protested. He looked at Ching. "Let's just take him out."

She tilted her head. "The more frightened he is, the easier he'll be for me to kill."

Yuan shrugged. "Your call."

*You know nothing.*

Ching raised an eyebrow.

"I'll go first." Yuan stared at the Demon Master for almost half a minute, trying to see if he would crack. He did—just barely—shifting his feet, and Yuan said, "I'm the strong arm."

The Demon Master scoffed, and Ching snorted.

Yuan took a moment to glare at her. "It's true, and you know it." He looked back at the Demon Master. "I get people to help me—help _us_—even if it's crazy. Even if it shouldn't be possible."

*That's not a power.*

"It is if they can't refuse." Yuan smiled.

The Demon Master scoffed again. *Farfetched.*

"So is most of the rest of my life," Yuan said. "But it's true: I mean, we were the two wildest of wild cards at the last tournament held here, and everyone just let us take over? Or how about now? Should relatively sane, intelligent people have followed some bratty kid into Outworld, where there were _armies_ waiting?"

*They're not all here.*

"True. But I gave them permission to stay. Some loose ends to tie up back home."

*They don't act like your marionettes.*

"They're not. They can argue; they can ask for different assignments; maybe they could even kill me to break away; but they can't just say no and leave. No matter how badly they want to. And believe me, they wanted to."

The Demon Master was quiet for a short time. *Silly dreams of a silly boy—*

"Come on, give it up," Yuan sighed. "You're a bad actor. I asked for generic support, and my hypothetical was answered by the teleportation of my brother and his keeper across space and through Earth's protective barriers, which is something Shao Kahn can't even do. If that's not power, I don't know what is. I'm the reason you're going to fail permanently because I assembled the forces that are going to kill all your supporters."

The Demon Master didn't say anything, shifting uncomfortably back and forth, as if gauging whether he could escape. Finally, he stopped moving. *You claim you know your destiny, but you speak nothing of her.*

"Oh, she's easy," said Yuan. "And way cooler."

Ching raised her chin.

*Very well.* The Demon Master rose off the ground. *In that case, there remains only one path.*

* * *

Lieutenant Blade dropped out of the crawlspace first, landing in a crouch on the lower floor of Lin Kuei headquarters. If Yen Sa's memory hadn't failed him, she would be just in front of the room where the Lis' older son had said the lab was.

He watched through the hatch in the ceiling as two ninjas rushed into his view. Blade holstered her pistol and held her left hand toward him, warning him to stay put, then sidestepped and turned her gesture into a clothesline, taking out the first ninja. The second checked his speed, approaching her more cautiously, but she caught his punch and moved behind his arm, smashing her elbow into the base of his neck. Second ninja down. More were coming, but Yen Sa wasn't concerned. He twisted his neck to look over his back and check Major Briggs's progress.

The crawlspace was a little too narrow for Briggs's muscleman shoulders, but he was fixing the problem by banging the sides of the crawlspace with his metal fists, the enhanced strength of arms easily bowing the walls outward. Yen Sa winced at every blow, less for the noise than the damage he was doing to what had once been Yen Sa's home for almost two years. The major hadn't caught up with Yen Sa yet, but it wouldn't be much longer.

Blade gave Yen Sa a _come_ hand gesture. Four ninjas sprawled on the ground around her, and two more were on their knees, hands behind their head.

Yen Sa slipped out of the crawlspace. As he rose, he could see through an observation window into a room which was indeed the laboratory and full of scientists who worked at his company, now staring out the window at the blonde woman who had wiped out their guards.

When they recognized him, a cheer went up, and he felt himself blush furiously. He waved his hand at them, and they quieted.

He walked around the corner. The door was closed and locked, but on a hunch he keyed in a few numbers on the pad by the door, and it slid open. Vendetta hadn't bothered—probably didn't know how—to change the code.

The scientists started to spill out the door, crowding into the hallway eagerly.

"Okay," said Yen Sa. "Lieutenant Blade and Major Briggs—is he here yet?" He looked over at the hatch, and saw a metal fist banging it wider. "Major Briggs will be down in a minute. They're going to escort us out of the ship, and as you've seen, they're excellent fighters, so there's nothing to worry about." He clapped his hands together and glanced into the lab. All the scientists were out. "Lieutenant."

"Yes?"

"Get the Lin Kuei into this room, and I'll lock it back up."

She nodded and, turning back to the surrendered ninjas, motioned with her gun toward the lab. They got up carefully and started to shuffle toward the door.

Yen Sa leaned over and started to drag one of the unconscious ninjas toward the lab by his ankles. Someone grabbed his arm, and he jumped, dropping the ninja's ankles.

It was one of his scientists.

"Just follow the others," he said, catching his breath again. He removed the scientist's hand from his arm and patted him on the shoulder. "It'll be okay."

"I put in a code," the scientist said quickly.

Yen Sa cocked his head. "I don't follow you." Blade and Briggs moved past them, both dragging ninjas, the major dragging one with each arm.

"There are two finished, working cyberninjas out there," the scientist said more slowly. "And they're bad news. But I put in a code—an emergency shut-down code—and none of the ninjas caught it."

"Do you know that for sure?"

"I'd be dead."

"Right." Yen Sa nodded. "How do we shut them down?"

The scientist handed him a sheet of paper with numbers written on it but grimaced. "It only works from the master controls, and two days ago, Vendetta moved them."

"Do you know where?"

"No."

"Well, I can guess. Thank you." Yen Sa clapped his employee on the shoulder. "I'll take care of it. Please go with the others." He turned back to the group. "Major, Lieutenant, I'll catch up with you outside. You shouldn't have any more trouble with the doors—you can get out from this side of the ship."

Lieutenant Blade acknowledged as the scientist nodded nervously, finally backing away from Yen Sa and toward the other scientists. Major Briggs led the way down the hall away from the lab, giving the closed door a good smash from his metal arms and breaking it off its track.

Yen Sa winced, but watched as the scientists filed through the doorway. Blade was last, scanning back and forth behind them, gun ready.

A secret shut-down code in the cyberninjas' programming, transmittable only from the master controls, which Vendetta had moved. Well, it didn't take much of a leap of logic to put the master controls in Vendetta's personal room. He didn't trust anyone else—certainly not now that his daughter had betrayed him. It was worth investigating, even if Vendetta's room wasn't a very smart place to go at the moment, since it would contain, among other things, a typically irate Vendetta and an equally irate Sub-Zero.

He jumped up and grabbed the edges of the hatch in the ceiling, pulling himself back up into the crawlspace between the floors.

* * *

Sub-Zero was well aware of how ridiculous he looked. He had been trained in martial arts since he was a very young child. He was a highly skilled assassin, with excellent instincts, and he could usually end a fight within thirty seconds.

When he put his mind to it. Unfortunately, his mind was much more interested in beating Vendetta's face in than trying to dissect his weaknesses. So he attacked without hesitation at every opportunity Vendetta gave him, and this often ended in he and Vendetta grabbing and tugging at each other with no more grace than two squabbling airheads with a firm grip on each other's hair.

He was much more agile than the old man, so even without an attack plan, he shouldn't have had any trouble beating Vendetta's face in. But Vendetta really was a master of fire and apparently unconcerned about singeing himself in close quarters. When Sub-Zero had him in a hold, such intense heat would grow on their contact points that Sub-Zero had to release him and hop away to keep the burns minimal. If Sub-Zero got a good hit in, the first was usually the last, because a puff of flame between them would force him to scramble backward and, on more than one occasion, pat out his smoldering clothes. Worst of all was when he tried to fight at long-range. Vendetta could fire off spouts of flame with such speed and accuracy that Sub-Zero spent most of his time throwing himself into rolls to one side or the other and trying to close the distance again to stop the onslaught. If he did get a chance to summon and throw ice at Vendetta, Vendetta would aim another blast of flame at the projectile and turn it into nothing more than a puddle before it reached him.

Sub-Zero was enraged—even more—and humiliated to think that if his brother or his brother's girlfriend were here, they could contrive to take out Vendetta with less trouble than Sub-Zero was taking just to keep himself alive. And it wasn't because they were better fighters than he was, or even because they were smarter than he was. It was just because they'd been born special.

The only thing Sub-Zero could make happen just by thinking it was the formation of ice. And that was useless.

He threw one more ball of ice at Vendetta, hoping to catch him off guard, but of course he didn't. Fire spurted around the ball, and it melted enough in midair to fling itself into a curve and clatter into the wall beside Vendetta. Sub-Zero shook his head a bit in surprise, remembering how crisply and easily Vendetta had swatted his first ice attack out of the air with a small flame.

Vendetta was getting sloppy. This meant that if Sub-Zero kept it up, one of his ice attacks would eventually get through, and with that kind of opening, he might be able to finally gain the upper hand. He had to figure out in advance what to do to finish it immediately when that happened.

Sub-Zero flung himself into a backward handspring to avoid a puff of flame, and, landing in a crouch, took the empty time while Vendetta aimed the next flame to consider his opponent's condition.

Vendetta was dripping sweat, much more sweat than Sub-Zero himself, despite being the one doing all the flips.

Vendetta's skin, particularly around his arms, looked red. Much redder than simply blocking Sub-Zero's blows should have made it.

Vendetta's teeth were clenched, and he panted heavily through them. It could have been anger, but it was different from the angry face Vendetta had been wearing when Sub-Zero's father had first torn off his hood and mask. It could have been pain.

Sub-Zero rolled underneath another burst of flame and back up to his feet, then whipped his torso back to the left to face Vendetta. The slight hesitation before the next flame attack clinched it.

Vendetta wasn't just getting sloppy. His own powers were hurting him. And that meant two things. One, Sub-Zero could definitely hit him with ice if he was patient enough. And two, he wasn't going to have to wait for that chance.

He came up from another dodging roll with his back to the tapestries and stood his ground. Vendetta faced him with his hands raised but again hesitated.

Sub-Zero raised his chin.

Vendetta cocked his head, and a smile slowly spread across his face.

The temperature in the room began to increase, and Sub-Zero tensed himself.

Then there was the orange swirl of flames in Vendetta's hand, much more concentrated than his typical blasts, growing larger, coming closer, blossoming outward suddenly and violently in all directions, the pressure in the room suddenly becoming unbearable, and—

* * *

Kitana bounced off the wall again and shook her head as she rose. The witch walked calmly through the room toward her, one hand raised, the Shadow Priests that were fighting the Kitsune guards bobbing out of the way for her. More than one got a punch to the face for his trouble, as the Kitsune guards proved fairly good in a scrap. Of course, the Shadow Priests kept getting in their own way, and whatever it was the red ninja was doing disrupted all of them. If Kitana had actually managed to connect any blows with the witch, she would have thought that Tung had been stuck with the harder opponent.

She threw a fan as she rose to her feet and watched as the witch waved it away. The invisible wall slammed into her again, but she had almost gotten used to it and recovered her balance quickly. She darted to the side, trying to get around it before it forced her against the real wall behind her.

She didn't make it.

The witch came close, smirking up at her as she wriggled uselessly against the barrier. "It's sweet how you and your friends keep trying. Really, tenacity is admirable, but I'm afraid it doesn't get you anywhere if—"

A Shadow Priest slammed into the witch, sending them both sprawling across the floor. The barrier dissipated, and Kitana jerked her head to the right to see the tall Kitsune guard grab another Shadow Priest by the robe and toss him across the room. Kitana could have kissed her.

She darted away from the brawl, toward where Ennir lay prone on the floor. She yanked a fan out of her boot, leaving it closed, and pulled it back to stab Ennir.

"Is that wise?" the witch asked, just as Kitana started the motion, causing her to jerk to a halt and almost overbalance. The witch flopped over onto her back. "Have you forgotten what happened last time you tried to injure me?"

Kitana's free hand twitched toward her stomach, where she had the scar to remind her: she'd sliced herself instead. She took a step backward.

The witch pushed herself off the floor with a grunt. "Can we stop this pointlessness?" She brushed off her robe. "I'll kill you quickly."

Kitana raised a hand and pushed it through the air toward the witch, knocking her back onto the floor. The witch wasn't the only one with telekinetic powers.

* * *

It was time for Rain to leave. It had been time for him to leave for almost half an hour. The noise of the fighting was so loud that the Shokans and Centaurions could not hear his shouted commands. They wouldn't have followed them if they could hear them, but his place was commanding his troops. To leave was desertion at best, cowardice at worst.

After careful observation, Rain was convinced that the battle was close to evenly matched. Some Shokans and Centaurions had been downed, and mutant carcasses littered the arena floor. But there had been many more mutants to start with, so Rain was confident in his calculation that, if left to itself, the battle would end with just a couple dozen mutants standing, after hours of fighting. It would be a loss, certainly, but not a rout. He would have to send in the Shadow Priests to turn the tide, but it would be better to wait for the mutants to tire more and their ranks to thin, as the Shadow Priests worked best as a swarm against inferior numbers. If he waited an hour and then went to get the Shadow Priests, they could roll across the arena, attacking mutants one by one and encountering little resistance until there was nothing but savaged mutant bodies left among the Shokans and Centaurions.

By all rights, he should spend that hour exactly where he was, observing the battle and trying to give orders. But his eyes kept going back to the paper he held in his hand and the depiction of the scantily clad woman dying helplessly. The only reason the nomads had to single out Tanya was that she had once tried to give them orders. And the only reason she had done that was that he had sent her.

If Tanya died, it was his fault. But he could save her. If he left.

He gave the battle one last scrutinizing sweep, then crumpled the paper in one fist and marched off the balcony.

* * *

Unbelievable. Kung Lao looked up at the balcony, where the purple ninja no longer was, and threw his arms down in frustration. He'd worked his way three-quarters of the distance around the upper tiers of the arena's seating to try to get to the purple ninja—whoever he was—and fight him, and now he was gone. And after the ten minutes it would take Kung Lao to get the rest of the way around, there was no way he could find him.

There were two Shokans coming up the stairs toward him again. Kung Lao tucked his arms to his chest and spun, sending gales of wind rushing away from his body. The wind hit the Shokans and knocked them over to tumble back down the stairs. Kung Lao was sure that trick wouldn't work on flat ground—the Shokans were much too heavy—but they were top-heavy enough that stair-climbing was a precarious activity for them, and all it took was one little shove. From afar. If he tried to shove them physically, they'd pick him up in their giant fists and crush him like rotten fruit.

He was sure he wouldn't be able to knock over a Centaurion with the same trick, but they seemed to have a really tough time with the stairs. He'd seen one try, only to trip itself and fall back down, and he wondered how many tries it had taken the Centaurion he'd fought to get up to the exit, and whether that made it a stair prodigy or a determined coward.

Regardless, he was sure he didn't want to fight a Centaurion again, so he wasn't going to go down to the arena floor unless he had to. He had managed to beat the first Centaurion by cutting its throat with well-aimed hat throws and letting it bleed to death. It had taken four cuts to get it to bleed fast enough, and in the process, Kung Lao had dodged around the pillars so that the Centaurion had knocked most of them out from under the arches they were supporting, and part of the ceiling had collapsed.

But not before he'd glimpsed another Centaurion out in the corridor. And that was why he wasn't in a hurry to teleport anywhere. Coming out of a teleport, he was helpless for a few moments, and an enemy lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time could crush his skull before he even knew he was in danger. He'd considered it when he'd noticed the ninja on the balcony. That ninja was someone important if he was on Shao Kahn's balcony, observing, and fighting him was a way Kung Lao could do some good without having to fight any more Centaurions. But if there were Centaurions roaming around the hall on one side of the arena, there could be Centaurions on the other side, just off the balcony. Not to mention Shao Kahn. And Liu Kang.

And now there wasn't even a ninja. Kung Lao felt like ripping his hat off his head, throwing it to the ground, and stomping all over it. But he needed it, so he was just going to have to keep moving and do what he could.

But it really made him wish he'd just stayed by the portal. Curiosity. Cat. _Et cetera_.

* * *

Djurash stormed through the palace, the former Edenian queen tripping along behind him. She'd fallen a couple of times and he'd dragged her on her knees once for a while, but she was too heavy for that to be effective, so he'd had to stop and haul her to her feet. She wouldn't pick herself up. He'd never known a more annoying person.

He didn't belong on babysitter duty. He hadn't back in the tents with Kitana, and he certainly didn't in the middle of his revolution.

But he was making decent time. The Shadow Priests who normally guarded the fancy floor—and whom he and Kitana had taken the servants' floor to avoid—were missing, perhaps called to the arena to help fight the insurgence. The thought made him smile because if they pulled in the Shadow Priests, it meant the nomads were winning. Shadow Priests were very physically frail, and though it was hard to get close enough to give them a good hit, one was usually all it took.

But they would have slowed him down even if they couldn't stop him, and their absence meant he would soon make it to the arena, where he could signal some of the nomads on the floor to make their way up, take over babysitting duty, and let him get back to the tower to fight the sorceress.

And then he wouldn't have to write in his records that during the revolution he had done much to help plan, he had spent his time protecting their enemy's former queen and current weapon.

He looked around a corner out of instinct and was lucky he did, because there were Shadow Priests stationed there, two of them as usual. He let go of the queen and trusted her to stop herself, as dead weight would, before lunging around the corner and extending his arm blades.

He had speared the nearer one through the side before they even noticed he was there. It writhed in the air and began to sink slowly toward the floor before death hit, and it dropped like a rock. The other Shadow Priest came around quickly, getting him in the shoulder with one of their annoying flying kicks. He pivoted the arm the Shadow Priest had kicked, pushing his blade toward it and managing to nick something under the hood. As the Shadow Priest recoiled, Djurash twisted his upper body and sliced the Shadow Priest nearly in half with his other blade. It joined the other on the floor.

He turned back to fetch the queen only to see her staring at him blankly from just beyond the corner. He quickly retracted his arm blades to avoid frightening her, but immediately regretted it when she bared her teeth and leaped toward him, embedding her fingernails in his face.

* * *

Li Wei Yong was the first to rise by merit of having been the farthest from Vendetta when it happened. He tried to wave the smoke away from his face, coughing, and looked around. Enmity lay not far from him, sprawled on her face. The red cyberninja was in pieces scattered around the hole it had torn in the wall. The other cyberninja was spread-eagled on its back, black char marks on its yellow breastplate. At the front of the room, the tapestries were on fire, one of them crumpled on the floor, the rest burning upward to reveal the viewports they had hidden. Some of the viewports were cracked, and one was letting chunks of dirt spill in.

There was a body on the floor near the middle of the room. Wei Yong stumbled toward it, dragging the tip of his sword along the ground, and gagged when he saw the charred and bloody mess it was. A scrap of remaining orange cloth let him release all his air in relief. It wasn't his son.

He shook his head in disbelief at the carnage. He'd heard cautionary tales as a young man about the perils of overusing elemental powers for the purposes of aggression. From the look of things, Vendetta had just written a pretty spectacular one.

Then a tortured gasp for air made him suck his breath in again. It was still alive.

He straightened. "Vendetta."

One eye rolled over to look at him.

"Oh, good, you can hear me." He pulled his sword out of its sheath. "I'd just like to take these last moments of your life on behalf of the Mandalorian people to tell you how much we hate you and how happy it makes us that you're dying horribly. And to say that you deserve to die like this, alone, in great pain, horrible to look at, and most of all, destroyed by your own misuse of your power. But I want you to know something, Vendetta, from me. Even after everything you've done—to my people, to my family, to _everyone_, I am still capable of mercy."

He put both his hands on the hilt of his sword and raised it, point downward, above Vendetta's chest.

"And also, as head of our military at the time of your treason, I get to sentence you. I don't think I need to be more specific."

He tightened his grip and pushed the sword down a little before stopping himself.

"And to be honest, I really want to kill you myself."

He stabbed.

* * *

Enmity's own coughing woke her up. The last thing she remembered was an explosion picking her up and throwing her back onto the floor. She didn't even have to think to know who the source of the explosion was, and as to its wild severity...she still had the burns on her arms to lead her to that conclusion.

She rolled from her belly onto her side to cough more effectively and to see for herself what had happened, only to freeze, seeing Li Wei Yong standing with a sword poised over a body on the floor. Then Li Wei Yong stabbed, and she shuddered, covering her face with her hands and curling up.

It was over. And that was what really overwhelmed her. Not that he was dead. That everything to do with him was over, and she didn't even have to think about him when she woke up the next morning. She had expected to be either angry or relieved when it happened, not really sure which it would be. She hadn't expected to be afraid.

She breathed deeply into her hands, waiting for the slight trembling she could feel in some of her muscles to subside. A whirring sound layered itself over the sound of her breath and her heart in her ears, and she quickly rolled onto her knees, pulling her hands off her face and into a fighting guard. The yellow cyberninja was slowly climbing to its feet.

Tomorrow, everything to do with him would be over. Today, she still had work to do.


	28. Chapter Twenty Six

**Transposition**  
by Nyohah

**Chapter Twenty-Six**

* * *

Ching backed up several paces to a distance from which she could easily teleport-kick the Demon Master if he tried to escape. She was prepared for any of the tricks she'd seen him pull the first time they fought—the first time she'd killed him.

She wasn't prepared for him to start talking.

*There are things you must know before you make your decision.*

"There's a decision?" Yuan asked.

*There is always a choice. Your choice is to kill me or not to kill me. My choice is to give you the opportunity to do the latter.*

"We don't need your help with that. That's the default."

*My choice is to give you a reason.*

Ching saw Yuan relax his guard. "Hey," she said. He pulled his fists back up.

The Demon Master rose a little higher in the air. *The forces of evil have known you were coming for millennia. And we have prepared for millennia.*

"Not very well," Yuan said.

*Not as you see it. That is why I must open your eyes. Many ages ago, I structured a force for overtaking all people in the universe. There are always countless beings attempting just such a thing. They usually fail before conquering even their own homes. I watched what happened when they didn't fail, how often it was that two such beings clashed, one destroying the other, the other weakened by the fight and quickly overtaken by some other force. I saw that if we ever wanted to succeed in our goals, I had to convince them to work together, to leave each other alone until the end, when there was nothing left to conquer, and then set them like rats upon each other.*

"Wow," said Yuan. "That was almost inspiring, until the end. Should we kill him now?"

Ching shook her head. "Your structure—you're talking about the Numbers."

*Yes.* The Demon Master inclined his head, turning the rams' horns on his headdress toward the ground. *The first being I brought under my guidance was Shao Kahn. He was already ruler of many realms at that time. I saw him and recognized that he was the most promising being in all the universe at that time to accomplish my goal. But he had a problem: he could trust no one. All the beings he placed his trust in as second-in-command eventually turned on him, trying to kill him and seize power. They were, of course, unsuccessful. But allowed to continue in this way, Kahn's paranoia would grow until he destroyed himself. I approached him and made him an offer: I would provide him with a trustworthy servant, someone _ineligible_ for ruling and thus someone who would never try to seize his power. He only had to submit to my guidance and agree not to conquer the realms held by others in the group, and he would have his chance to rule all at the end. As he was first, he was easy to convince. I gave him the Number One, his servant the Number Two, and on that day, the contest began.*

"Contest?" Yuan sounded incredulous. "A game?"

*Of course not a game,* the Demon Master snapped. *But someone had to be winner in the end. And on this point only was it that my servants were to fight.*

"How long ago was this," Ching asked, "if Yuan's grandfather was next?"

*He was not next. When I enlisted Shao Kahn I decided that as criteria to gain entrance to my contest, one must conquer at least one's entire home realm. And to give my contestants some chance of ever winning, I allowed for succession, so that no noble conqueror would be disqualified simply because a small mistake led to his death. Then, knowing as I did, that you would be coming, Hua Ching Sa, and coming from Mandalore, I set aside a place for it—for you. Of all the Numbers I have assigned, it and its servant were claimed last.*

"Less than fifty years ago," said Yuan.

*Precisely.*

"So who _was_ next?" Ching asked.

*Some time after Shao Kahn came Ennir and her conquered world Edenia.*

"Of course," Yuan said, sounding slightly piqued. "I should have guessed."

*Her brilliance was such that it was never obvious she was in full control, but look under the surface, and there she was, manipulating everything to go her way.*

"Hasn't changed much, has she?" Ching said dryly.

*Earth was next.* The Demon Master sounded almost wistful. *Its development was so far behind the other realms at that time that it was inconceivable a single army could conquer everything. A single army could never get to all the fledgling civilizations, not in one human's lifetime. But there was one man who conquered with great ingenuity everything he could reach and showed unabated avarice for more. I invited him with no misgivings.*

"Shang Tsung?" asked Yuan.

*No,* the Demon Master said with some disgust. *Tsung was but a servant, a servant for Outworld.*

"How did he get to play for Outworld if he was from Earth?"

*He and Kahn were its founders.*

"What? Are you saying Shang Tsung is as old as Shao Kahn?"

*Nonsense. Shang Tsung expended much energy trying to gain a Number. Tsung convinced Shao Kahn to combine his conquered realms into one because one realm was easier to rule than many, and this would give him a better chance in the end game. It was this idea that caused Shao Kahn to finally accept him as servant.*

"I thought Mortal Kombat was that idea," said Yuan, "so Shao Kahn could come after Earth."

*Shao Kahn could _not_ 'come after Earth'.*

"He'd promised not to, Yuan," Ching reminded.

"But Raiden said—"

*Raiden knows nothing. Mortal Kombat was a fail-safe for the possibility that Earth's contestant would fail utterly. As it happened, he did. He died young, and no true successor ever arose, though many have tried.*

Ching exhaled sharply through her nose. "_That's_ why you were on Earth. You were trying to raise a proper Number Seven, not just wait for one to arise."

*Shang Tsung was confident he would win the next, tenth, Mortal Kombat and secure the realm for Shao Kahn, but he had failed in the same situation centuries before.*

"And when he _did_ lose, you got desperate. You gathered dozens of babies in hopes that one of them would work."

*My previous choice for Number Seven had been a failure. I could not mold her. Humans are more intractable than I realized. But I felt if I chose an infant, then I could have greater influence, and if he had all the traits I required, he could grow to be the ruler I required.*

"What was it, a subcontest?" asked Yuan.

"With a Number Eight lined up for each entrant," Ching said.

*And a place for all the losers, as disposable mongrels to serve as troops.*

"Number Nine." Ching nodded, then raised her chin. "And me?"

The Demon Master shook his head. *You came to me by chance. It only proves that this is where you are meant to be. You are in this contest, Hua Ching Sa, given the Number Three. And as your original Number Four has died, you can have your proper Number Four, the boy.*

"Number Four's dead?" Yuan asked. "Vendetta's dead?"

*Yes. Just now. You think you are winning, destroying my servant on Earth. But he is no great cost to me.*

"Are you saying we just did you a favor?"

*No. You have done yourselves a favor. Do you see? This is a contest you win. This is a contest designed for you to win.* The Demon Master turned his head for the first time to look at Yuan. *By default. She has power immeasurable, and you bring her more support than she could ever need. But you are mortal. I am not. I bring the final element to your harmony: immortality. If you kill me, you go back to your insignificant lives. If you don't, you get to rule everything. Forever. That is your choice.*

There was silence. Ching's jaw tightened until it ached.

Then, beside her, Yuan burst out laughing.

* * *

Tanya was on her way back to her rooms, nervous about being caught with the journal she had stolen and hating the way the throne room jutted into the center of palace, forcing her to walk all the way around it, when she heard an eerie screech echo down the corridor.

She froze. First there was that roar coming from the arena, and now someone was screaming in the hallway? She knew things get could chaotic whenever the armies had to come to the palace, but this was just ridiculous. Why wasn't Rain ordering them to be quiet? Did the witch have her brittle claws so far into him that he didn't even do his job anymore?

The screech came again, and this time Tanya could tell it was coming from the direction she was headed. She looked down the hallway behind her, thinking. She could go back and try to sneak through the throne room as a shortcut, but she probably wouldn't have tried that under normal circumstances, and she definitely couldn't try it when the witch was in there. She had to keep going toward the screeching and hope that whoever it was wouldn't know anything about the journal, since it was too big to hide.

She came upon them suddenly after rounding a corner: a mutant fighting some pale old woman with long white hair. The mutant rushed the woman, but she screeched again. Close as she was, it made Tanya's ears hurt, but that was nothing compared to what happened to the mutant. He was caught in the direct path of her screech and went limp. The woman whacked him in the head with a roundhouse kick, and when she finished her turn, she was facing Tanya.

Another witch! Tanya dropped her shoes and the journal, covered her face with her hands, and shrieked.

Something hit her in the stomach, and she dropped to the ground like a rock. But the witch didn't stop just because she was down. Something hit her in the side, and Tanya tried to roll away from her attacker. After two rolls, she took her hands off her face to push herself into a sitting position. This left her vulnerable to the witch's backhand to the cheek. Tanya was knocked onto her back again. She looked up at the witch standing over her and screamed.

The witch fell to the side and landed on her stomach in a sprawl. Standing behind her was the mutant, one fist still raised.

Tanya scrambled off the ground, but the mutant ignored her, crouching beside the fallen witch.

"I hope I haven't killed her," he said. "The princess will take it really hard."

"Who, Kitana?" Tanya babbled. "Does this one have _Kitana_ under her spell? Is that why she did those things she did?"

The mutant extended one of his arm blades, and Tanya backed up. But he merely held it in front of the witch's mouth. He apparently liked what he saw because he stood, retracting the blade again and narrowing his eyes at Tanya. He kind of looked familiar.

"You know Kitana?" he asked.

"Naturally."

"Would you say that there is in any way a possibility Kitana would probably not be one hundred percent unhappy should she learn that there was a not inconsiderable probability that I had put into the care of a person not completely unlike yourself her very troubled mother?"

Tanya stared at him for a few seconds. "Yes?"

"Marvelous. Have at it." He brushed by her, starting down the corridor in the direction she'd come from.

"Wait! Where are you going? You can't leave me here with the witch!" Tanya grabbed her shoes and the journal and started down the hallway after the mutant.

He turned and stopped her. "I'm going to _fight_ a witch. You can't come."

"Another witch? How many witches are there?"

The mutant gave her a look, then pointed at the unconscious witch. "You have to guard her. I have to kill the witch—the other witch. Clear?"

"I can't guard her," Tanya whined. "What if she wakes up? You couldn't even fight her, and you have muscles and weapons."

The mutant's expression darkened, and Tanya raised her arms to her chest to fend off the death blow.

But he didn't attack. "You're right," he said slowly. "I couldn't even fight this witch."

Tanya sighed in relief. "So you won't leave me with her?"

* * *

Djurash gave Rain's whiny trollop a push, and she stumbled into the room, just missing stepping all over the former queen.

"Wait!" the trollop shrieked. "This is a closet!"

Djurash shut the door on her and turned the key in its lock. The pounding faded quickly as he ran toward the arena.

* * *

After three more attempted Shokan attacks, Kung Lao finally reached the balcony, and with it, the only remaining exit from the arena, since Kung Lao's fight with the Centaurion had collapsed the entrances at the other end. The balcony hung above the seats just high enough that he had to strain upward to grab onto two balusters and hoist himself up. Through the large ornamented doorway leading into the palace proper, Kung Lao could see Shao Kahn and Liu Kang still fighting, further down the hall. He turned around to look out again at the carnage in the arena. For the first time, there seemed to be a notable majority of mutants left standing. Kung Lao took a step back from the railing, shaking his head in amazement.

Then a mutant appeared in front of him, blades extending as he leaped over the railing and onto the balcony. His clothes were torn and bloody, but there was a prominent embroidered insignia badge on his chest glinting in the light.

While Kung Lao's brain registered these facts about the mutant rapidly approaching him, his mouth and throat had formed a scream. When he realized not only was he about to die, he was about to die a fool, he shut his mouth and put his hands up in guard position.

"Watch it!" shouted the mutant, landing inches in front of Kung Lao. He used the flat of his hand to push Kung Lao to the side, extended blade whistling by Kung Lao's ear, and then charged over Kung Lao's falling body and into something very solid sounding. A moment later, the mutant landed on top of Kung Lao, blades planting themselves on either side of his head, one stabbing through the brim of his hat. Kung Lao made a strangled noise in the back of his throat.

"Sorry," grunted the mutant, pulling out his blade and rolling off Kung Lao.

Kung Lao rolled the other way, onto his back, and let out another short scream. There was a Centaurion right behind him, looking even bigger and meaner than the one he'd fought in the hallway, and he had appeared literally from nowhere.

"Elder Gods," gasped Kung Lao. "They teleport?"

"Some of them," answered the mutant, climbing back into his fighting stance.

The Centaurion stared him down and snarled.

"Mostly the ugly ones," continued the mutant.

That explained, at least, how the one Kung Lao had fought had gotten up the stairs. The combination of irony and stress caused Kung Lao to giggle a bit as the Centaurion charged the mutant. The mutant dodged easily, and the Centaurion slammed hip-first into the railing of the balcony, cracking it. Bits of plaster sprinkled onto the seats below.

The mutant came up from his evasive roll on the other side of the balcony. Kung Lao crossed the distance in three big leaps and stood next to him, eyeing the Centaurion warily. It snarled over its shoulder, and its long, metal rat's tail whipped toward them. Kung Lao immediately began spinning, putting up his wind shield, and felt the tail disrupt the air around him as the force of wind threw it away from them.

Kung Lao stopped spinning. The mutant had his arms in a cross-guard and gave him a closer look than he'd done before. The Centaurion had gathered his tail around him and was having a hard time turning around in such close quarters. Kung Lao and the mutant had a few seconds to breathe.

"I take it you're one of those Earth warriors," said the mutant. "I didn't know you were here."

"Just recently," said Kung Lao. "We didn't know you'd be fighting on our side."

"It's been a long time coming," said the mutant. "This is Motaro. He's the chief of all the Centaurions, and we really don't want to let him escape."

"Got it," said Kung Lao.

* * *

"Shut up," growled Shao Kahn, stomping toward Liu Kang.

"It's the endless resurrections!" Liu Kang seethed, doing a quick back handspring to avoid one of Kahn's huge fists. "You expect evil things to be evil and do evil things and perpetuate their evils through their lifetimes." He advanced toward Kahn, ducking and jabbing the colossus in the solar plexus.

Kahn grunted, but immediately counterattacked, swinging one fist in an overhand hammer strike toward Liu Kang's head.

Liu Kang sprang away. "And you expect there to be endless other vile evils in the background, climbing over each other like rats to try to be the one to replace the evil things."

Shao Kahn kicked toward Liu Kang. With the strength in his legs, one kick could probably break all of Liu Kang's ribs and litter his lungs with splinters. Fortunately for Liu Kang, Kahn started the kick too late, kicked too slowly, and couldn't even raise his foot to the height of his waist, so he didn't have much of a chance of actually hitting Liu Kang, and of course didn't.

"But what drives my _rage_," Liu Kang continued, breathing hard through his teeth, "is your inability to lie down and _die_ when I kill you. That was legitimate. That was Mortal Kombat, and the rules of the lives of heroes and villains, and _just revenge_ for the unjust deaths of everyone in my order."

"Shut up," snarled Shao Kahn, leaning shoulder-first into a rushing attack.

Liu Kang cartwheeled out of the way, and Kahn smashed into the wall, chipping into the stone with his spiked shoulder guard.

Liu Kang slipped into a fighting stance as Kahn turned. "And that—_that_ is why nothing will _ever stop me_ from destroying you forever!" he shrieked, throwing his arms forward and ejecting a mass of pure inferno toward Kahn.

The fireball hit the emperor directly in the chest and rocked him backward. As the fire dissipated and the smoke cleared, he shouted, "Shut up!"

* * *

Noob Saibot stared through the new hole in the wall. Beyond the wall was smoke—lots of smoke—and a badly charred body in orange ninja gear.

He closed his jaw hard enough to make it click and then, looking down, filled in all the other parts of his body that were gaping. He had been directly in the path of the explosion, which meant the countless bits of cyberninja and wall scattered around him had sliced through him on their way to their current positions. Sometimes, it was very lucky not to have a real body.

Regardless, his luck had clearly turned, and with the Lin Kuei collapsing around his ears, he had to make a choice: either give up his aspirations of conquering the Earth or abandon the organization that would make the position tenable. Ennir had as good as set him free: she had another Number Six lined up and didn't care if he came back. But the Mandalorian queen had implied that her son had foiled Shao Kahn's plans, and that meant taking Sindel back to Outworld. And if her son was on Outworld, the rest of the group could be there as well.

And if things went as badly there as they had for Vendetta, it wouldn't even be worth trying to conquer the Earth.

One of the people in the room had finally stirred and was standing over Vendetta's body, which made Noob Saibot's decision even harder. But he had to do what he had to do—and there would be another portal to Earth someday. He would still be around then.

He crept through the hole in the wall.

* * *

Sub-Zero groaned and rolled onto his back. He spent a few moments moving all his parts and assessing himself for injury. He seemed to have managed to avoid all the flames, but he had jumped to the side a little late. He remembered the explosion picking him up while he was in the air and slamming him against the wall. He'd grabbed a tapestry out of instinct to try to break his fall, and that seemed to be why he was now wearing one as a toga. It hadn't worked very well, since he had subsequently blacked out.

He turned his head to the left, catching sight of an alarming hole in the wall. Craning his neck a bit, he could see his father standing over a blackened body, his sword raised.

Had Vendetta survived? Sub-Zero jolted upright and immediately regretted the sudden movement. He put his hands to his head and groggily watched his father. He wanted to rush over there, shove his father out of the way, and finish off Vendetta himself, but his legs didn't seem ready to move yet, and the adrenaline to make them wasn't forthcoming.

He was shaking his head to clear it when something caught his eye. He stopped shaking and moved his eyes and his head slowly, scanning for movement.

And then, there it was a shadow creeping along the edge of the wall where there shouldn't have been any shadows.

Sub-Zero wobbled to his feet and stumbled forward.

"Nei Jen!" his father exclaimed, pulling his sword out of the body.

"Not now," he rasped, starting to get his feet under him.

The shadow had started to run.

Sub-Zero worked himself up to a trot, passing Enmity, who had curled up into a fetal ball, and the remaining cyberninja, which had begun to twitch.

He watched only the shadow, determined not to lose sight of it, and by the time he'd reached the door, he was sprinting.

* * *

Ming jolted awake.

=Yuen Ming! Wake up! Yuen Ming!=

"Okay, Honor, I'm awake," she groaned, crawling to her hands and knees.

=He is getting away! We must hurry!=

"Who?" She sat up, then used the table she had knocked over in her fall to help her to her feet. When she looked down at it, she saw that the other side was riddled with bits of metal. Some of the fog lifted from her mind. "What happened?"

=There was explosion, and wall broke. Ninja escaped!=

Ming grabbed her staff off the ground and started around the table. "Where?"

=When he got to outside, we came back to warn you. Now...=

"He could be anywhere." Ming rested the end of her staff on the ground and thought for a moment. "Open the door, Honor."

It slid open almost immediately, and Ming felt the Vyrenchi closely dogging her as she exited the room.

=Where do we go?=

"He likes to jump portals. This time we stop him."

* * *

The shadow ninja was faster than Sub-Zero—_much_ faster—but he made a few wrong turns during their run through the village that allowed Sub-Zero to catch up precious seconds. He'd almost cornered the shadow ninja in a dead-end once. But he had slipped by Sub-Zero and continued his run, always eastward. It hadn't been hard to guess the shadow ninja's destination, but he didn't want to risk letting him out of his sight so he could hole up somewhere and wait out his pursuers.

It was when they had made it outside of the village proper and were on the long straight stretch to Mr. Yen's house that the shadow ninja really pulled ahead. Sub-Zero pushed himself as hard as his aching body would let him, but still the shadow ninja was just a figure in the distance when he crashed through the glass doors and into the building.

Sub-Zero reached the building a minute and a half later and carefully stepped through the doorway, avoiding the jagged glass still in the frame. He rushed to the back of the building and into Mr. Yen's private rooms. Mr. Yen's kitchen was along the back wall, and next to it was the door leading down into the cellar. Beside that was his mother, picking herself up off the ground. The door was open.

Sub-Zero dodged around his mother and took the stairs as fast as he could. At the bottom, the portal was still crackling. Yen Mulan, Biao Ying Xi, and that detective from Hong Kong looked rattled.

"Did he go through?" Sub-Zero demanded.

"I'm afraid so," answered the detective. "I fired two rounds into his chest, but it didn't even faze him."

"Not surprising." Sub-Zero shook his head. "He smashed through a glass wall and didn't even bleed."

"A wall smashed through him, and he didn't even bleed," said his mother from behind him.

Sub-Zero turned. "Stay here. I'll go."

"No," she answered. "I have to go. He killed—"

"Stay here," he repeated more forcefully, turning back to her. "I'll take care of this."

"But it's my—"

"I don't care. _I_ will do this."

They stared each other down for a few seconds.

"Nei Jen," his mother said, suddenly softening and reaching a hand toward him, "I know when you and your brother were children, I gave him more attention. It wasn't—it wasn't that I didn't love you, or that I loved him more, or even that he was sick. It was just—you were the future king of Mandalore once."

Sub-Zero looked at the portal.

"When I looked at you," she continued, "that was all I could think for so long. You were the future king of Mandalore, and you lost that. _I_ took it away, and the pain was just—" She choked.

He looked back at her. Her head was bowed, and she'd pulled her hand back.

"Please, you don't owe me anything," she whispered. "It's my fault this has happened, and I—"

Sub-Zero jumped through the portal.


	29. Chapter Twenty Seven

**Transposition**  
by Nyohah

**Chapter Twenty-Seven**

* * *

Noob Saibot leaned against the pile of rubble that had once been an entrance to the arena, staring down at the carnage on the arena floor.

Mutants and Shokans were killing each other. Mutants and Centaurions were killing each other. Shokans and Centaurions were killing each other—but that was usually the case and probably meant nothing.

So it was mutants versus everyone. _That_ was a catchy summary of Outworld's history.

But surprising, nonetheless. From what he'd learned from the Mandalorian queen, he'd been expecting to find a handful of Earth warriors doing as much damage as they could, which wasn't much. This—this could be catastrophe. And that was without the Earth warriors.

There _was_ one in the arena, though, on Shao Kahn's personal balcony. He was helping a mutant fight a Centaurion. Behind them, Noob Saibot saw Shao Kahn framed in the arched doorway. He charged something that seemed to be wearing red pants, and that something dodged, somersaulting past the doorway.

Noob Saibot watched as the tiny figure in red pants flew across the opening, one leg extended, the other tucked up underneath him. Almost immediately, he flew back the other direction, limbs flailing.

Shao Kahn had things under control, then. And even if he didn't, Shao Kahn alone was not worth worrying over. But it was likely that Ennir was also engaged in battle with an Earth warrior. And the Demon Master—

The Demon Master was the only one who really mattered. Noob Saibot hopped off the pile of rubble and backed away from the arena. Wherever the Demon Master was, he would be most useful there.

"Going somewhere?"

Noob Saibot spun toward the voice and caught a fist with his jaw.

* * *

The shadow ninja's head whipped to the side and his body pivoted with the motion as he fell. Sub-Zero leaned toward the shadow ninja, waiting until his head cracked on the ground before grabbing his tunic and rolling backward onto his back to pitch the shadow ninja across the foyer in front of the arena.

Sub-Zero rocked back onto his feet and turned around. That first punch would have knocked out most people. But even after that punch and a throw, the shadow ninja was easily climbing back to his feet, shaking it off.

Sub-Zero wasn't really surprised. He aimed an ice blast at the shadow ninja as he was rising, and it connected, freezing him over completely in milliseconds.

But as Sub-Zero ran toward the shadow ninja to try to smash him into bits, the shadow ninja stepped right out of the ice, leaving behind a perfectly formed ice statue of himself.

Sub-Zero skidded to a halt.

The shadow ninja looked the statue over, staring into its face for a moment. Finally, he turned back to Sub-Zero.

"Very good work," he said, "but I think your method might be cheating."

Sub-Zero charged him again. But suddenly there were hands on the back of his neck, and he was slammed facefirst onto the ground before he even realized that the shadow ninja had teleported.

The shadow ninja was on top of him then, straddling his back and grabbing the back of his head, ready to slam his face into the ground some more. Sub-Zero brought his hands under his chest and pushed off the ground. The shadow ninja, for all his size, didn't weigh very much, and tumbled off.

Sub-Zero spun with an axe kick, aiming for the ground where the shadow ninja had landed, but the shadow ninja had already rolled away by the time Sub-Zero finished his turn. As Sub-Zero's heel hit the ground, the shadow ninja rose, less than a meter away, and eased into a fighting stance.

Sub-Zero didn't hesitate. He leapt shoulder-first toward the shadow ninja, bringing his wrists together and turning his palms toward the shadow ninja to loose another ice blast. The shadow ninja had no hope of dodging at such close proximity, and the ice blast hit him just before Sub-Zero did. The shadow ninja was frozen solid when they both hit the ground. The ice shattered.

But not the shadow ninja. The ice broke around him and fell away from his body, leaving him unharmed. He pushed outward with his arms, tossing Sub-Zero up and over so that he landed on his back with his feet just a few inches from the shadow ninja's.

The shadow ninja was on him in a second, kicking him in the ribs. Pain blinded Sub-Zero, and he curled up into a fetal position, trying to protect his wounded ribs and drawing the cold into his hands.

The shadow ninja stepped backward and then took a quick step forward, swinging his foot toward Sub-Zero's wrists. Sub-Zero rolled onto his other side, taking him just far enough away from the kick that it almost missed, brushing against his upper back. He heard the shadow ninja take a step back again, readying the kick that would aim for his exposed kidneys, or if the shadow ninja had enough power, try to snap his spine.

Sub-Zero heard the whistle of the kick coming toward his back, and rolled again, back toward the shadow ninja. He lifted his left leg off the ground as he rolled, catching the shadow ninja's foot and slamming it back to the ground, trapping it there. In the same motion, he lunged up onto that knee and slid the ice dagger he'd made between the shadow ninja's ribs. Then he collapsed back into a sitting position, one leg under him and one arm clutched to his side.

The shadow ninja's leg was free, but he didn't seem to care. He had his arms spread, elbows bent and palms facing the sky. He jerked his hands toward himself every couple of seconds as he stared down at the dagger in his chest.

Sub-Zero watched the shadow ninja as he climbed unsteadily to his feet, trying not to whimper every time he breathed a little too deeply. He moved over to the wall and leaned one elbow against it for support, then began to back away from the shadow ninja, following the wall.

The ice dagger began to drip, and still the shadow ninja stared at it.

Sub-Zero reached the nearest cross corridor and turned around, moving faster now. He had no idea what had caused the shadow ninja's reaction. It was just a piece of ice, and judging by the shadow ninja's previous survival rate, it wasn't even going to do him any harm. But Sub-Zero was not about to complain.

He had turned down a different cross corridor and was halfway to the next intersection when the words, "_What is this_?" whistled down the corridor after him. But they were faint, and the shadow ninja nowhere to be seen, and Sub-Zero continued to hobble along, each step pulling painfully at his side.

* * *

Yen Sa was halfway to Vendetta's quarters when the duct rattled around him. He stiffened, bracing for more tremors, but none came.

Odd. Yanxubin never had earthquakes. But he didn't really have time to try to figure out what it was—and he wasn't sure he really wanted to know—so he continued through the duct for another thirty meters and five more turns and found a hatch leading directly into Vendetta's room.

He wiggled up to the air intake vent and peered carefully up through the slots, still hesitant to actually get anywhere near the inevitable fight between Vendetta and the Lis' elder son. But he didn't see anyone, and though the angle of view through the vent was bad, the quietness confirmed it: the room was empty.

He forced the hatch open and crawled up into Vendetta's quarters. The room was dark and a little too warm, with tapestries everywhere and tiles concealing the metal floor. Behind him, moveable screens blocked off another section of the room. Presumably that was where Vendetta slept because in the section of the room Yen Sa stood in, there was only a wooden table.

On that table, apart from a few papers, was a crude electronic device, consisting of a metal box with an antenna, a twelve-key keypad, and a small monochrome LCD display capable of displaying two lines of text. It was exactly the sort of thing his engineers made for first-run mock-ups in their labs. Furthermore, it was the only piece of technology in the room that hadn't existed in the middle ages. Clearly, it was the master controls for the cyberninjas.

Yen Sa slid into the chair beside the table, pulling from his pocket the piece of paper with instructions for shutting down the cyberninjas and starting to navigate through the menu.

* * *

Li Wei Yong had both his arms wrapped around the torso of the yellow cyberninja from behind. It struggled fiercely in his grip, and he barely kept hold of it, its much greater strength making its escape inevitable. He expected it could pitch him over its shoulder at any time if it only got the idea to do so.

And probably the only reason it hadn't was that it was distracted. Enmity stood in front of the cyberninja, heavily favoring her right foot, which was probably broken from kicking the cyberninja's solid plastic head a little too hard. Still, she was easily blocking and dodging its occasional kicks as she studied it, trying to determine its weaknesses and where she should hit it with surgical fire strikes to disable it most quickly. Which meant nothing if she didn't make up her mind soon.

"Hurry up!" Wei Yong shouted.

The cyberninja shifted its weight to kick toward Enmity and almost knocked Wei Yong over backward. He was wrenched back to his feet by the cyberninja's movements, feeling like he was more of a passenger than a hindrance.

Then the cyberninja fell over backward, landing on Wei Yong. The breath whooshed out of him, and he felt very lucky that nothing cracked.

But the cyberninja was still.

"Help?" he wheezed.

Enmity bent down and together they rolled the cyberninja off him. He gasped for breath, and she offered a hand to help him to his feet.

"Nice work," he said, accepting it.

She shook her head. "I didn't do anything."

Wei Yong looked down at the cyberninja. "Huh."

* * *

Rain turned a circle in the intersection of two corridors. Where would Tanya have gone?

He rubbed his face with his hands, the mutant quartermaster's drawing still half-crumpled in one hand.

Tanya had disappeared. Had she already been taken by the mutants?

Which posed a more important question: Had the mutants already escaped the arena and overrun the palace?

Rain uncrumpled the drawing and looked at it again. Was it an accurate depiction of their plans? Were these their main targets: Rain, Shao Kahn, and Tanya?

Rain, Shao Kahn, and..._Tanya_?

Rain squinted at the female figure amidst the flames drawn on the page. The hair was a little long to be Tanya's, and the dress looked old-fashioned.

And why burn _Tanya_ at the stake?

The realization chilled Rain's blood. He dropped the drawing and ran.

* * *

Yuan was still laughing. Ching looked annoyed with him, but he couldn't stop.

Join the Demon Master! Rule the universe!

"Will you knock it off?" Ching asked, glancing away from the Demon Master for a moment.

"But you have immeasurable power!" he giggled. "We can join together and be gods! We can frolic about in our palace and rob the peasants!"

"Did you have this much trouble accepting you were a prince?"

"No, but that was real."

"Are you saying my power's not real?" Ching gave him another glance, this one a little murderous.

"No, but I wouldn't call it immeasurable. I mean, you can't, like, make a twinkie appear in mid-air because you're hungry."

"And that's how you measure power."

"It's one way."

Ching shook her head, her posture getting more tense. "Then you think I can't conquer the universe."

"Kill it, maybe," Yuan said. "Then I guess we rule by default." He tried to choke down another giggle and it turned into a snort.

There was a sudden flurry of white, and something smacked Yuan in the face.

The Demon Master was gone.

"Yuan!" Ching snapped.

"Not only my fault," he protested, but she was already chasing the Demon Master down the hallway.

* * *

Tung staggered as the floor shook underneath her again. The red ninja had backed out of her reach and was using the floor itself to keep her away. If he'd only been shaking it, she wouldn't have been so worried, but he kept pulling out chunks of it (and the walls, and the ceiling) and throwing them at her telekinetically. If she wasn't crushed, the floor was going to crumble beneath her and send her plunging down to the floor below, with the rest of the floor piling on top of her when she got there.

The ninja detached three large stones from the masonry all around them and hurtled them toward her from different directions. Tung threw herself into a sideways roll, narrowly evading them. But as she rose, she was suddenly being whipped everywhere, feeling insect stings on all her exposed flesh.

Eyes tightly closed, she caught some of the offending objects out of the air and rubbed them between her fingers. Pebbles. He'd broken up one of the stones and was throwing pebbles at her.

She raised an arm to shield her eyes and squinted toward the red ninja. The pebble storm ceased, but in its place was an alarmingly large green blob heading in her direction.

Tung leaped to the side, and the green blob shot past her. She heard it splash against the wall behind her and looked back, surprised. As she turned her head back toward the red ninja, something picked her up and slammed her against the ceiling.

She stuck there, with her stomach pressed to the wall. But she wasn't pinned there. With minimal effort, she rolled onto her back and looked down to see the red ninja looking up at her. A chunk of rock dislodged itself from the floor and flew up at her. In a panic, she pushed against the ceiling, ending up in a standing position, with her head to the ground and her feet on the ceiling.

The rock landed beside her feet. It had fallen up, and so had she.

But she didn't have time to wonder and stabbed her sword downward, extending her arm all the way to try to reach the red ninja.

He simply stepped backward, and then Tung was falling again, back toward the floor. She almost got her feet under her and ended up falling forward onto her knees instead. Before standing, she swung her sword toward the red ninja again. He pulled a rock out of the floor and used it to parry her blow.

Tung pushed herself to her feet, and they continued fencing, she with a sword, he with a rock. His skill was astounding. He slipped in and out of stances with ease, and from one movement to the next, it was as though he was using his rock to simulate a different type of weapon.

She couldn't get past his defenses and didn't know where to start to try. And she cringed to think of the damage she was doing to her sword.

She pulled her sword away from him and took a step backward, considering her next move. The red ninja whirled his arms and lunged into forward splits, chucking the stone at her. It hit her shin, and she grunted.

What _was_ this guy?

* * *

Lundiy sent a side kick toward one of the floating monks. It tried to dodge her kick, but its brethren were wedged so closely around it that it only knocked some of them aside, an effect that was increased greatly when Lundiy's kick connected. The circle of floating monks surrounding Lundiy and Mistral widened a bit into an oval, and the pressure in Lundiy's chest eased just that much.

She had never been claustrophobic, but when the things walling you in were enemies that wanted to kill you, it was different.

One of the floating monks darted toward her suddenly, leg extended in a kick. They did that: normally they bobbed forward, floating toward you gently like they had no hurries in the world—and then they would attack, pushing off nothing and suddenly zooming toward you with enough force to send you flying.

Lundiy started to sidestep the flying monk, but another off to her side came toward her in the same style of flying kick. She threw herself onto her back instead. As the monks flew over her supine body, she pulled her elbows back and placed her hands under her shoulders, then swung her legs up and over her body. She connected with the second flying monk, sending him crashing into the floating monks on the other side of the circle.

As Lundiy watched from the ground, bent in half with her legs over her head, Mistral picked another monk out of the sky and threw him bodily over Lundiy and into the monks gathered on her side.

Lundiy took a deep breath and flipped her feet back toward the outside of the circle, arching her back to land in a crouch.

The circle immediately began ebbing forward again, tightening around her. Lundiy clenched her fists.

Then a male voice shouted something in the old language, and the floating monks stopped moving. Lundiy watched as a path lapped open through the mass, and a man dressed in purple strode through, the path immediately beginning to close behind him.

Mistral rushed the man, and it was like the inverse of what she had been doing to the floating monks. He pivoted on one foot, turning all the way around, and raising his other leg as he spun. He hit Mistral in the chest with his heel with more force than should have been possible, and she went flying back into the floating monks, knocking several of them to the ground and landing on the pile.

Lundiy approached him more slowly, feinting left when she was close enough, and then swinging her right hand toward his face with all her strength. He wasn't fooled and blocked easily, grabbing her arm before she could pull it away.

He yanked on her arm, moving his left arm up and over her head like he was twirling her in a dance, and then his right arm was around her throat, his hand reaching toward her ear.

* * *

Kitana didn't see Rain come in. But when she heard his shout and saw the smug grin spread across Ennir's face, she looked across the room through a sea of Shadow Priests toward the entrance from below. A path opened through the Shadow Priests like the tide going out, revealing Rain quickly approaching them, the Kitsune guards between him and Ennir.

And so it was that Kitana had a perfect view to watch him casually break Lundiy's neck.

Without thinking, Kitana closed and rotated the one fan she had left, then whacked Ennir on the underside of the wrist with the heavier end, causing her to drop the fan she had stolen. Kitana caught it out of the air with her telekinetic powers and pulled it into her hand even as she was marching toward Rain.

As they neared, she opened one of her fans and threw it toward him. He sidestepped and responded with a bolt of lightning. Kitana felt the static growing around her, pulling at her hair, and dived toward Rain, throwing up her remaining fan.

The lightning hit a Shadow Priest, and the fan clattered to the ground unsinged.

"_That_ was pointless," Rain said, bending down to pick up the fan.

Kitana pulled her other fan back to her and rose to her feet, her ears ringing from the thunder. "You're always a little late to the party, aren't you, Rain?"

"I have responsibilities," he answered, flicking the fan open and inspecting its razored edges.

Kitana snorted. "Foremost among them always to protect the witch who pulled the strings to get you those responsibilities."

Rain looked up sharply. "I got the position I have because I executed my orders. Something you _used_ to be good at."

"Yes," Kitana said. "But then I considered who was giving the orders."

Under his mask, Rain smiled. "There are better options, I agree. But setting the mutants on us is not the answer. This _is_ all your fault, yes?"

"Not really," Kitana replied.

"Well, your plan is failing," Rain continued, gesturing behind him. The Shadow Priests had flowed to one side of the room, and Ennir was only barely visible as a pair of feet and a tattered robe below the hems of the rows of Shadow Priests forming a wall between her and the rest of the room. "The sorceress will survive, you see."

"Yes, we'll see," Kitana answered, whipping her fan open and slashing toward Rain's stomach.

* * *

Sub-Zero let the wall support him as he wandered down long, wide corridors, trying to find someplace secure to hide; all he really needed were bandages and a locked door. But far from finding anyone's apartment to invade, the closest he'd come to even finding a person had been a couple of those monks Shang Tsung had liked to have around lying dead on the floor.

He was headed toward a cross-corridor that looked promisingly small, and thus potentially residential, when something jabbed into his side and he almost screamed.

It was a key, left in a door's outside lock. And if he could use the key to lock the door from the inside, that truly _was_ promising.

He was not at all prepared for what he saw when he turned the key and pulled open the door. Sindel sat placidly in the room, staring at nothing. On the other side, as far as it was possible to get from her—which wasn't far since the room was a closet—was a copper-skinned woman in a skimpy dress.

She was on him in a second, wrapping her arms around him. He jerked backward, but she clung expertly, and the result was that she was even closer after his escape attempt than she had been before.

It was only then that he realized it wasn't an attack—it was a hug.

"Oh, thank you, thank you," she said in a language he was surprised he remembered. "I could have been locked in there forever."

"Probably not," he answered, in the same.

She released him, transferring her grip to his arms and looking him over carefully. "You don't look Edenian," she mused, feeling his biceps.

"Strangely, there's a reason for that." He managed to dislodge her from one arm and take a step into the closet. "Do you mind if I stay in here with you for a while?"

The lock on the inside of the door was old-fashioned, and looked identical to the one on the outside. To be sure, he stuck the key in the lock and gave it a twist.

Or rather, he tried to. The copper-skinned woman jumped him again, this time from behind, and sent the key scraping across the wood of the door.

"You can't leave me in here with that witch!" she shrieked, arms slung around his neck.

"I wasn't going to leave—" He sighed. "Do you live here?"

"Yes," she whispered in his ear.

"Close?"

"Yes."

He took a step back from the door, pulling her arms away from his neck, and turned around to face her. "Then I'll let you out of this closet if you take me to your room."

A genuine but slightly frightening smile spread across the woman's face. "I'm Tanya," she said, and in the same breath continued, "let me get my things."

* * *

Yuan and Ching ran through the halls of the palace's ground floor, chasing the Demon Master. This time, they didn't have to worry at all about servants getting in their way. As soon as the servants saw the Demon Master coming, kicking and pushing off the walls to propel himself headfirst through the air near the ceiling, they screamed and ducked and were easily leapt over.

It wasn't until they followed the Demon Master up a stairwell—the hard way, which involved actually using the stairs—and emerged next to the arena, that they both realized where the Demon Master was headed and gave each other wide-eyed stares for half a second before Ching disappeared.

Yuan headed to the medical room where they'd made the portal the hard way—which involved actually using his legs—and when he got there, he tried to slam the door open by charging into it and hitting it square on one shoulder. It didn't budge, and he bounced off, almost falling over. As he recovered his balance, he noticed that it opened outward. He wrenched the door open just in time to see the Demon Master give Ching a hard blow that knocked her, arms windmilling to try to prevent it, into the portal. With only the slightest glance at Yuan, the Demon Master followed her.

And where the hell was Kung Lao?

Yuan leaned against the table, hair whipping in the portal wind, and panted. Then he coughed once, held his breath, and jumped.


	30. Chapter Twenty Eight

**Transposition**  
by Nyohah

**Chapter Twenty-Eight**

* * *

Ching's backward fall picked up where it left off when she emerged on the other side of the portal, and, too disoriented from the trip to put a foot back to stop herself, she hit Mr. Yen's floor flat on her back.

The Demon Master came through the portal before she could get up. With a foot solidly planted on Ching's stomach, a kick that connected with Yuan's mother's chest, and a hard slap straight to the police inspector's face, he propelled himself out the door before Yuan's two friends could start screaming.

The delay between the Demon Master and Yuan was longer, but Ching was still on her back when he came through the portal, so she had a tremendous view of the hopping dance he did to avoid stepping all over her.

"Close the portal!" he shouted before he'd found a place to set his feet.

"But the others—" protested the girl who'd made the portal.

"Just close it," Yuan said. "The only person cowardly enough to retreat already came through." He reached down a hand to help Ching to her feet. She took it.

"Where'd he go?" Yuan asked.

Yuan's mother pointed toward the door with her spear, rubbing her chest where she was kicked.

Ching, one arm clutched to her stomach, added, "He's probably out of the building by now."

Yuan rubbed his forehead. "Not good. Not good." He looked up at Ching again. "Do you think he'd make for Hong Kong? How fast could he get there?"

"I don't think he teleports," Ching answered. "But I'm not sure he'd go all the way to Hong Kong on his own, either. He's more likely to seek out his followers."

"Vendetta," said Yuan's mother.

"But he knows Vendetta's dead," said Yuan.

"That shadow ninja?" asked Ching.

"He went through the portal," said Yuan's mother. "So did Nei Jen."

Yuan jerked his head a little. "Well—right. But does he know that?"

Ching shrugged.

"It was about ten minutes ago," said Yuan's mother.

"Then that's a maybe," said Yuan. He shook his head. "It's the best we have."

Ching followed him to the doorway, where he stopped and turned back.

"Come on, Mom," he said. "We'll need your help."

* * *

Yen Sa dropped feet-first onto the deck of what had once been the ship's bridge. "Predictable man," he said, seeing the charred corpse near the center of the room.

"What?" asked Li Wei Yong, slurring a bit. He was seated on the ground not far from a deactivated cyberninja. Enmity sat next to him, one leg bent and supporting the other, keeping her foot off the ground. She had a strained expression on her face, though Yen Sa couldn't tell if it was the pain of her foot or the pain of Li Wei Yong's company.

"Vendetta," Yen Sa answered. "Where else would he run to?"

"Oh," said Li Wei Yong. "I suppose." He pointed at the cyberninja. "Did you do that?"

Yen Sa nodded. "One of my scientists told me how."

"I very much appreciate it, old friend." Li Wei Yong extended his hand upward.

Yen Sa stepped forward and took it, helping him to his feet. "Nothing much," he answered.

"Help me get her to her feet," said Li Wei Yong, jerking his head in Enmity's direction. "She's injured."

When they finally made it through the doorway, the bounty hunter from Hong Kong—Chat—was sitting down the hall. She leaned against the wall casually, looking up at the three Lin Kuei gathered around her.

"I'd order them to release her," Yen Sa said, turning his head to Li Wei Yong, "but I'm unarmed, you're wiped out, and Enmity's hurt."

Li Wei Yong shrugged. "She can still torch them." He pointed toward the Lin Kuei. "Release her!"

The three Lin Kuei jumped, startled, and backed away from Chat.

"Oh, Mr. Yen," one of them spoke up, "it's not like that. We're just talking."

"We were having a good time," Chat agreed somewhat accusingly, standing and brushing off her backside.

"Oh," was all Yen Sa could think to say. "Uh, sorry, boys."

The Lin Kuei waved a hand. "Would you like an escort back to the surface?" he asked, looking them over.

"That would be great," said Li Wei Yong with another shrug.

The ship was surprisingly quiet, especially considering that the three Lin Kuei led them through the common areas for lower ranking ninjas. But just as they got near enough to the exit that Yen Sa was beginning to believe they'd make it out without trouble, he heard running footsteps behind them. He looked longingly down the corridor. At the end, he could just see the last door they'd take before they reached the hatch leading to the surface. If they could have run, they might have made it. But not with Enmity injured.

The three Lin Kuei stopped and turned, the one who had been helping Enmity leaning her against the wall. All three turned to face down the hall, slipping into fighting stances.

A dozen Lin Kuei appeared around the curve in the corridor. The one in front skidded to a halt, pointing at them and shouting, "There they are! The intruders!"

The Lin Kuei behind him spilled down the corridor until, as they got close enough for Mr. Yen to begin to recognize their faces, one of the frontrunners suddenly stopped, throwing his arms out to the side to stop the others. They crashed into him, and almost ended up piling on top of him, but the ninja stood his ground, wrenching himself back up.

"Mr. Yen!" he shouted. He turned back to the face the group. "It's Mr. Yen!"

"So?" asked the first ninja who'd spoken, breaking through the group.

"I'm not going to kill Mr. Yen."

The first ninja crossed his arms. "Those are your orders."

"But he employs everyone I know who's not Lin Kuei."

"That means nothing! Don't you realize they have _murdered_ Vendetta?"

Yen Sa's defender leaned back a little and took his time in answering. "I don't think," he said carefully, "that's entirely a bad thing."

The first ninja threw the first punch. Yen Sa watched, a little wide-eyed, as more than half the original group of attackers turned on the others and fought for him. The three Lin Kuei who had been escorting him hurried into the fray as well.

He turned to Li Wei Yong. "I didn't expect that."

"Don't cry," Wei Yong answered, leaning around Yen Sa to add, "That goes for you, too."

Enmity shook her head, watching them with that pained expression again.

"Let's get out of here," Yen Sa said.

Li Wei Yong nodded, and Enmity turned from the fighting reluctantly.

"Finally," sighed Chat.

Yen Sa turned to head toward the exit, but he found a ninja in white in his path, floating inches off the floor.

"Honor?" he asked.

=Yuan Li has a request,= it answered.

* * *

Long before Yuan and Ching reached Lin Kuei headquarters, they could see the flashes of light and hear the light rumble of thunder that marked the battle going on at its entrance. Yuan's father, Mr. Yen, Enmity, and Chat were very busy keeping the Demon Master from getting into the manhole. To be honest, Chat wasn't doing much besides hiding behind the others, but to be fair, she didn't have any talents that lent themselves perfectly to the task of batting back a supernaturally powerful overlord who was—as Ching had told Honor—indeed stunned by bright flashes of light.

Mr. Yen had probably never been more effective with his particular skill. He was standing just to the side of the manhole, and whenever the Demon Master lunged toward it, he just waved his hand, and a globe of light erupted from just above the manhole, splashing green residue across Yuan's vision. As Yuan approached, he realized that the hand wave was there to warn the others, who closed their eyes and turned their heads away just before the flash occurred.

The flash stopped the Demon Master in his tracks, and the burst of flame Enmity followed it with sent him stumbling back a few steps, leaving the net gain of his charge just a few feet. Yuan watched as he turned savagely toward Mr. Yen, and a blue coronal glow appeared in the air over Mr. Yen's head. Yuan's father reached toward the glow, a growing electrical charge, and then seemed to throw it away to the side, where it erupted into a small arc to the ground.

As Yuan and Ching neared the fight and stopped, the cycle repeated itself, the Demon Master lunging, Mr. Yen and Enmity throwing him back. This time, Ching reached out her hand, and a sudden gale blew into their faces. Yuan was forced to take a step backward. The Demon Master, who was still off-balance from Enmity's flame attack, fell onto his back.

The expression he made when he looked up and saw Yuan and Ching standing over him was quite funny, but Yuan didn't have time to really appreciate it. In an instant, the Demon Master had risen off the ground, smacked Yuan in the chest with enough force to knock some air out of him, and hit Ching hard enough to make her stumble. Then he was off, half-flying toward the edge of town.

Yuan sighed, turned, and began to run after the Demon Master again, Ching beside him. But the Demon Master didn't get very far before Yuan's mother emerged from a side alley directly in his path. She jumped when she saw him and backed out of his way as Sonya and Jax followed her out of the alley.

Seeing the Demon Master, Sonya didn't hesitate. She raised her handgun and began to fire.

"Bad idea!" shouted Chat, who was just behind Yuan and Ching. "Duck!"

Yuan's mother and Jax hit the ground immediately, but Sonya, who had still been firing, was a second behind them. As she hit the ground, she clutched her arm, and Yuan saw bullets bounce off the wall above her head.

"This is much better!" Chat announced, adding, "Duck again!" as she tossed something toward the Demon Master.

That something had a fuse, and Yuan fell over stopping himself, which was just as well. He covered his head half a second before the dynamite went off.

It was a few seconds after the blast that his head stopped spinning enough for him to raise it up and see what had happened. The others who had been near were just picking themselves off the ground.

The Demon Master wasn't there anymore.

"Someone tell me we're so lucky that stick of dynamite disintegrated him," he said.

"He went down the manhole," said Ching. "I just caught a glimpse of him as he went down."

"_That_ was better?" demanded Sonya, using her good arm to push her torso off the ground.

"He doesn't like the blast," said Chat.

"We were trying to _catch_ him, not frighten him away."

"Well, at least I didn't get shot by my own bullet!" retorted Chat.

Yuan tuned out the argument and went over to the manhole, peering down into the darkness.

Ching stepped up beside him. "I don't suppose that one also goes to Lin Kuei headquarters."

Yuan shook his head. He looked up at her. "I don't suppose we can wait for the Black Death to get him?"

Ching didn't smile. She just shook her head.

"That's a piece of bad luck," said Yuan's father, stepping up behind him. "But you're on your own, kid."

Yuan turned his head sharply. "You can't refuse to help me," he protested.

"Maybe not," his father answered, with a shameless grin. "But I can do horrible things to you when this is all over."

Yuan grimaced and looked down the manhole again. "Anyone have a flash light?"

"Here," said Mr. Yen, coming up beside Yuan's father and tossing an object.

Yuan caught it. It was a bit of quartz. As he looked at it in confusion, it began to glow, and he remembered the conversation he'd had with Mr. Yen the night he'd found out he wasn't human. "Oh, right. Sunstones, was it?"

Mr. Yen nodded. "Take care of yourselves."

Yuan returned the nod and swallowed. Then he turned to Ching. "I really don't want to go down there."

In response, she gave him a shove.

* * *

Sub-Zero stood in Tanya's bathroom, examining a cut on his arm in the mirror over the sink. The bathroom wasn't exactly up to modern standards, and the faucet was really a small water pump, which he had to crank several times before he got water to come out of the spout and onto a washcloth so he could clean his wound. With his injured ribs, it was quite a chore. He considered asking Tanya for help, but she was preoccupied.

When she had opened the door to her room—after unceremoniously shoving her hand into her cleavage to fish out the key—he had been startled at the mess. A large wardrobe stood along one wall, doors open, and it looked as if she had taken all of her belongings out of it and tossed them around the room.

Tanya had grimaced a little and explained, "I didn't expect company." While Sub-Zero cleaned himself up, she had started cleaning up the room. He could see her through the door as she heaved a large ball of dresses into the wardrobe, leaning against the door to try to shut it. She stepped back, and the door eased open, leaving a large gap. But the only thing that hit the floor was a necklace, gems glinting in the dim light of the main room. Tanya turned toward the bathroom and approached him, tugging on her dress so that the neckline slid down even farther.

Sub-Zero reflexively jerked his eyes back to the mirror, but it wasn't what he had really wanted to do. He grabbed another washcloth out of the chest of drawers beside the sink and, with a moment of concentration, formed a sphere of ice, folding it inside the washcloth. "This will keep the swelling down," he said, nudging it toward Tanya's face. She had a long red mark along one cheekbone and small cut on her lip.

She took it with a dopey smile, looking a bit starstruck as she held it up to her cheek with both hands.

Sub-Zero turned his attention back to his cut, gritting his teeth at the sting as his scrubbing started it bleeding again. For whatever reason, Tanya had a large stash of bandages in the chest of drawers. As he reached for one, Tanya intercepted him, her hand running down his arm and slipping into his hand.

She gave his arm a tug. "You can do this at my vanity," she said sweetly. "It's much nicer."

Sub-Zero glanced at the row of gaslights above the mirror. "No," he answered, pulling his hand away. "It's much brighter in here."

"I know," she grumped, turning around and leaning against the countertop.

Sub-Zero cut off a length of bandage, wrapping it around his arm and tying it off. Then he took a deep breath and pulled his shirt off over his head. He grunted and hunched over, breathing hard. As the pain subsided, and he raised his head, he felt a touch on his back. In the mirror, he saw Tanya behind him, rubbing a hand across his skin.

"Oh, you're injured," she cooed, moving her other hand down his uninjured side. "But still really sexy."

"I'm a prince, you know," he told her before he could stop himself.

She smiled widely, showing her teeth. "Why don't you leave all this for later and let _me_ take care of you?"

He blinked at himself in the mirror, the ache from his injured ribs forgotten. Tanya leaned her head on his shoulder and met his eyes in the mirror.

Sub-Zero gave his head a good shake. "No," he said, mostly to himself, "now is not sexy time. I'm very busy."

Tanya peeled herself away from him and moved back to her previous spot, dropping against the countertop petulantly. Sub-Zero created another block of ice, curved to match his side. Tanya didn't even twitch as he reached past her to get hand towels to wrap it in. The shock of the cold against his side almost made him gasp, but the ache immediately began to ease, and he sighed.

"Are you some Earth warrior, then?" Tanya asked a bit bitterly, not looking at him.

Sub-Zero turned around to lean against the countertop beside her. "Mostly."

Tanya stood up and left the room. Sub-Zero closed his eyes and let his head fall back.

"There's a witch," Tanya said a few moments later.

Sub-Zero raised his head, startled. He hadn't expected to see her back for a while.

"You should kill her," Tanya continued, "and I think this will help." She handed him a black leather journal, then resumed her position beside him at the sink. "I'd ask my _real_ boyfriend to do it," she added, "but I think he's sleeping with her."

Sub-Zero didn't have any idea what to say to that, so he flipped open the journal. On the page facing him was a sketch of a floating monk, shaded with crosshatching. Flowing around the sketch was Edenian written in a loopy hand. The writing at the top of the page began in the middle of a sentence and seemed to be describing the creation of the floating monks. As he continued reading, disgust began to twist his face. Before he reached the end of the page, he flipped away from it to save himself from accidentally reading more.

Tanya, leaning against him, shoulder to shoulder, and peering down at the journal, said, "I _knew_ I was right about them."

Sub-Zero ignored her and continued to flip through the journal, looking for more things he recognized. Near the back, he found it: a sketch of a ninja with shadowy wisps extruding from his body. Sub-Zero flipped to the beginning of the entry and began to read as fast as he could. As he neared the end of the first page, his heart began to pound.

He jumped away from the countertop, spinning to face Tanya. The ice for his ribs hit the floor and shattered.

"What?" asked Tanya.

Sub-Zero just laughed and grabbed Tanya with one arm, pulling her to him and giving her a quick kiss on the forehead.

"What?" she asked again, laughing.

He shook his head. "Later," he said, then headed for the door.

* * *

"Why is your neck so hard to break?" Liu Kang shouted. He was sitting on the floor with Shao Kahn's head and upper back resting against him. His legs were around Kahn's torso, and both arms twisted viciously at his head.

In all, Liu Kang had been pleased with their fighting location. He was primarily a tournament fighter and hadn't realized before how crippling it had been not to leverage his environment to his advantage. But when Kahn had smashed a decorative mirror on the wall, Liu Kang had decided that if Kahn was allowed to spend his entire life cheating death, Liu Kang was allowed to cheat to end his cheating.

After he'd picked one of the larger dagger-shaped pieces off the floor and wrapped his headband around its base to protect his hands, it was only a small matter of evasive action and target practice.

Kahn lay on the floor, tendons through both knees and both elbows severed, his limbs flopping ineffectually as he tried to bat Liu Kang away. Liu Kang had also opened a gash in Kahn's stomach, but his muscle wall had been too deep to allow disembowelment. The shard of glass had ended up sticking out of Kahn's throat. But even _that_ wasn't enough.

As Kahn gurgled, Liu Kang continued to tug on his head. "Why do you take so long to die?" he raged. "You're wasting my time with your stupid misunderstanding of mortality!"

Liu Kang squeezed and twisted as hard as he could, and at long last, there was a pop, and Kahn's limbs stopped flopping.

"Finally," Liu Kang grumbled, crawling out from underneath the corpse's bulk.

* * *

Kung Lao teleported again. He appeared just to the right of Motaro's flank and fell three feet to the floor, landing on his feet. He did a back handspring to get away as soon as he could.

But once again, he needn't have worried about Motaro's counterattack. The mutant was there on time, right in front of Motaro, taunting him with wide swings of his forearm blades that were never really intended to connect.

Kung Lao backed off, watched Motaro's movements, and teleported again.

Everyone always thought teleportation was such a slick skill. Run to Paris for a meal, then get dessert in Venice. Dodge every punch and end up behind your enemy, ready to take him out without a fuss.

It sounded cool in stories, but it raised a lot of practical issues. To start with, no human could harness enough energy to teleport more than a few yards, and that was after years of practice. Even worse, it wasn't actually instantaneous. Try to teleport out of the way of a punch, and you were likely to get punched right out of your teleport. Worse still was the helpless moments you spent coming out of the teleport if your enemy was close enough to reach you. It also meant that hitting a moving target was no easy feat if the movement was at all unpredictable. Kung Lao had teleported onto moving trains before, sure, but this was different. Yet the mutant was as good as his word, and Kung Lao hadn't even had a close call yet.

He just wished _he_ were as good as his word.

Another miss. Kung Lao ended up behind Motaro, and had to duck immediately underneath the whipping rat tail. Before he even rose from his crouch, he teleported again.

A second later, a solid mass of muscle materialized beneath him, and Kung Lao slid down onto Motaro's horse-back, throwing his arms forward to catch him around the man-torso.

Then it was the rodeo from hell. Motaro bucked. His tail pounded Kung Lao on the legs. His arms reached behind his back, trying to pluck Kung Lao off him, crush him into a little ball, and toss him off the balcony. Kung Lao squeezed his eyes shut and hung tight, hands locked around opposite wrists, praying for it end.

He heard the whistle of the mutant's blades on a close-call with Motaro's man-torso and felt the displaced air brush across his arms. Motaro stopped his attempts to dislodge Kung Lao just long enough to snarl at the mutant and pound him in the nose as the mutant gamely stood his ground. Kung Lao swung his left arm up and around Motaro's thick neck, being careful to smack his windpipe as hard as possible. He squeezed with all his strength, pushing against the back of his left hand with the heel of his right hand to add even more force.

It was like trying to choke a tree, and it never would have killed Motaro. It wouldn't even have slowed him down much, except that he stopped moving to toss his head backward in anger—and almost immediately hunched forward, grunting.

Kung Lao looked down and saw the mutant's right forearm blade buried in Motaro's horse-chest, plunged in so deep the knuckles of the mutant's fist were pressed hard into the skin.

Kung Lao released Motaro's neck and slid off his horse-back. Before he had his feet on the ground, the mutant had speared Motaro's man-chest with his left forearm blade. Kung Lao watched as the mutant pulled out his right forearm blade and swung it in a high arc, twisting his left forearm blade to give his right arm enough range of motion to reach Motaro's neck.

The blow didn't decapitate Motaro. His skeleton was too tough to break so easily. But the entire left side of his neck was cleaved to the bone, and the blood just fell out of him. The mutant pulled his blades away and stepped back. Without a sound, Motaro slumped forward, his front legs curling under, and the man-torso hanging limply over the front, wrists dragging on the ground.

Kung Lao circled around the fallen Centaurion as the mutant made faces and wiped the blood on his blade off onto his pants before retracting them.

"You're a good decoy," he said, wiping away the blood dripping down from his nose with the back of his hand.

"You're frighteningly deadly," said Kung Lao.

"So am I," came Liu Kang's voice.

Kung Lao turned around and saw Liu Kang come through the arched balcony entrance, sans Shao Kahn. Kung Lao grinned, pushing his hat up on his forehead. "Did you see that, Liu? We killed that beast, and with our combined forces—" He waved a hand. "No trouble."

"Impressive," said Liu Kang, unimpressed.

"Excuse me," said the mutant. "My men are dying." He leaped over the edge of the balcony.

"Who was that?" asked Liu Kang.

"No idea," said Kung Lao.

* * *

Ennir backed up almost to the wall, watching Rain fight Kitana through momentary gaps in the host of Shadow Priests in front of her. They had spread out between her and the attacking Earth warriors, forming a barrier like pawns in chess, protecting the truly important figures with their very mass.

And there, in the front, was her knight, showing up at odd times from unexpected directions to turn the tide of battle, his actions most significant in the extent to which they freed her to act. It didn't matter that she was blocked from reaching her enemies by her own protection. She could stretch across the board and cut off the head of the enemy with a precision strike or use her greater strength to sweep them all off the mortal coil in one massive outpouring of force.

It didn't take a quick student to guess which method she preferred.

She raised one hand idly, craning her neck from side to side to catch glimpses of the battle on the other side of the room. The only thing to determine was whom to kill first. Kitana was probably the leader of the group, but she posed little threat to Ennir. The Mandalorian was mostly an unknown quantity but had been useless against Ennir in their previous encounter. Then there was the Kitsune guard. She didn't have the same feeling of power about her that the other two women had, but Ennir had had bad luck with Kitsune guards in the past, and if she wanted to play it safe...

The mutants took the choice out of her hands before she could make it. There was one in the doorway, then two, then three, and almost before she realized what was happening, there was a platoon charging into the room, rushing her Shadow Priests.

She snapped the fingers of her raised hand in frustration. It seemed she would _have_ to use force.

* * *

Tung had not noticed that one of the Argentinean girls had died until she nearly stumbled over the body. Even then, she had no time to process the event; the red ninja drove her around the room relentlessly, constantly thrown off-balance by the changes in his fighting technique. All she could manage to throw at him was the occasional counterattack, but by the time she struck, he was off doing something completely different than she thought he would, and her strikes usually ended up embarrassingly off-target whiffs. She was beginning to tire.

The arrival of the frightening creatures with metal daggers in their mouths and swords in their arm, however, had been impossible to miss. She only wished that some of them had come to her aid instead of crashing into the Shadow Priests and trying to cut their way through to the witch beyond. She was afraid to ask them for help, though she thought they were allies, since one of them had the same markings on his clothing as the one who had been accompanying Kitana earlier.

The red ninja had her too preoccupied to dwell on it, though. Every move he made was a new strategy, some new way to cut through her defenses and send her scrambling away. With the next move, he would effortlessly force her back the other direction, keeping her pinned near the corner of the room.

A vicious high crescent kick sent her dodging to the right, where she felt her shoulder hit the wall, and a flash of panic surged up her spine and down her limbs. If she didn't get away soon, she'd be trapped, and then it would be over.

Even as she panicked, the red ninja summoned a chunk of the floor into his left hand and swung it toward her head, intending to crush it between the rock and the wall.

Tung dropped down and to the left, tucking her head and letting her shoulder hit the ground. She finished the roll in a crouch just off to the red ninja's left, just over a sword's length away. Raising her head, she saw his entire flank, undefended, skin stretching tight over the muscles of his side. She shot to her feet, using the movement to help propel her sword toward the flesh just under his rib cage, aiming for his kidney.

He couldn't have dodged far enough to any side to avoid her sword entirely. But before her sword connected, he suddenly rose, pulling his legs up to his body and rotating around the hand that still pressed fragments of rock against the wall. Her sword hit the stonework. She looked up to see the red ninja crouching nonchalantly on the wall above her head.

She made a noise of frustration deep in her throat. "You are not natural!" she yelled. "It isn't fair!" And she flailed her sword up toward him a long arc, almost perfectly perpendicular to the wall beside her. He leaned back, and it passed just in front of his chest.

His eyes widened so much she could see the whites all the way around his dark irises. An instant later, he tumbled from the wall, hitting the ground in front of her. He had the presence of mind to wrap his arms over his head and tuck his chin, though, and rolled off to her left as he landed.

For a moment he looked up at her, his eyebrows coming together.

She brought her sword toward him in another long arc.

"Whoa, wait!" he shouted suddenly, blocking the swing with his forearm guard, then reaching toward her wrist with his other hand and easily disarming her. He kicked the sword backward and lunged forward, grabbing her shoulders and staring into her eyes.

"Who are you?" he asked. "What's going on?"


	31. Chapter Twenty Nine

**Transposition**  
by Nyohah

**Chapter Twenty-Nine**

* * *

The sunstone emitted a soft, warm glow as Yuan and Ching walked in a half-crouch through the storm sewer. The tunnel was concrete and probably almost seven feet in diameter, and they could have walked normally down the center of the tunnel, but they kept as close to the wall as possible to avoid splashing through the shallow, watery muck running down the center of the tunnel.

Yuan kept pushing the sunstone out further in front of his face, trying to aim it like he would a flashlight, but it didn't work that way. The light surrounded them in a halo and kept them from accidentally falling into the muck or running into things, but it didn't do much to penetrate the gloom. Yuan couldn't help but feel it was doing more to help the Demon Master avoid them than it was doing to help them to find him. But at least it illuminated the space to the sides and behind them, so nothing could sneak up on them.

"I remember when the government upgraded our sewer system," he said, edging along the wall. "Everybody was kind of excited, thinking they must have a plan for expanding the city if they went to so much effort to improve it. Nothing ever happened of course; this is Yanxubin. But we never minded. I don't think anybody's basement has flooded since." He sighed, looking back at Ching. "I kind of hate them for it now."

She raised her eyebrows.

"We wouldn't have fit in the old system," he explained.

"It could be worse," she answered.

A rat ran between Yuan's feet, and he flinched. "How, exactly?"

"The Demon Master's old lair also had connections to the other kind of sewer."

Yuan grimaced and turned back to the front. "No wonder you've died so many times," he muttered.

Ching didn't answer, and Yuan hurried forward, trying not to make noise so he could hear any splashes that might indicate they had caught up to the Demon Master. When he'd first come down the ladder, he was afraid they'd be faced with endless branches down which the Demon Master could have gone, leaving the task of finding him nearly impossible. But Yuan had soon realized that this one pipe was by far the largest the government's engineers had put in, and if the Demon Master had somehow managed to wedge himself into one of the smaller pipes branching away from it, they would have plenty of time to find him, since he would be stuck.

They had passed ladders up to other manholes, but if the Demon Master had used them, he'd be back on the street, where the others could slow him down. It seemed the only thing they had to do was catch up to him before he reached the end of the tunnel, where it presumably drained into the creek running through the woods by Mr. Yen's house.

It was a near thing. With the sunstone held in front of his face, Yuan didn't notice the glow of the tunnel's tapered, shaded opening until a dark shadow almost blotted it out. He gave an incoherent shout and pointed, almost dropping the sunstone. Ching reacted more intelligently, teleporting to the end of the tunnel, getting between the Demon Master and the exit. She had to crouch to fit in the smaller space, but Yuan could see her foot snap out in silhouette, catching the Demon Master in the face and knocking him backward.

Yuan dashed forward, reaching out to pull the water from the muck in the middle. He gathered it into the opening and then froze it, plugging the hole with solid ice. When he was close enough to clearly see the plug in the light of the sunstone, he turned around and did the same to the tunnel behind him, pulling every drop of standing water out of the tunnel and a good bit of the humidity out of the air. Then he kicked some of the residual slime out of the way and tossed the sunstone down into the relatively clean spot.

Ching fought in close quarters with the Demon Master, trapped at the end of the tunnel. Yuan finished his dash and grabbed the back of the Demon Master's robes. He pulled backward just as Ching hit the Demon Master with as hard a side kick as she could manage from a half-crouch. The Demon Master stumbled backward, tripping over and tripping up Yuan, and they both splashed into the slime in the middle of the tunnel.

The Demon Master was unfazed by the fall, scrambling off Yuan almost immediately. He ran away from the end of the tunnel, and Yuan watched as Ching's feet passed beside his head.

"Just kill him!" he shouted toward her.

"I'm trying!" she shouted back as he pushed himself out of the muck, trying to find a clean spot on his clothes to wipe his hands on.

The Demon Master reached the ice blocking off the rest of the tunnel and pulled a fist back, slamming it into the ice with all his body weight behind it. The ice was thick, though, and barely cracked.

Ching stopped, too, just out of the Demon Master's range. "It's not like I have a lot of practice at this," she continued, sounding distracted. The Demon Master turned and faced her, his arms at his side.

"You have more practice than anyone else," Yuan argued, but as he was speaking, Ching screamed, falling to her knees and clutching her head, and his mouth moved on its own to finish the sentence, his voice trailing off. Ching suddenly relaxed, tipping forward so that her hands just barely caught her before she fell face-first into the muck. She panted heavily.

"Ching?" Yuan finished, his voice tiny.

* * *

Tung broke herself out of the red ninja's grip. "Who are _you_?" she retorted. "What's going on with _you_

?"

"I'm—" the ninja began. His forehead furrowed. "That's a hard one."

Tung scoffed and tried to slip around him to get her sword.

He stopped her, throwing her back and shaking his head. "Look—just tell me who's fighting who? Whom? Who?"

"I'm fighting you."

The red ninja nodded and rolled his hands, one around the other, signaling for more information.

Tung sighed, tilted her head to one side. "Kitana is fighting Rain; Mistral is fighting the monks; and all the creatures are trying to break through to kill the witch. Ennir."

The red ninja gasped and leaned around Tung. "Ennir is here?" He leaned to the other side, excited. "I can't see her!" After two more leans, he stopped, closed his eyes, and then calmly said, "Sorry. I'm a twit."

Tung stared at him. After a couple of seconds, he clutched both hands to his chest, opening his eyes to stare down at them. Then he looked back up at her, wild-eyed.

"If Ennir is here," he babbled, "then you must have broken my connection to her somehow during our fight. She has these threads," he added, seeing the confusion on her face, "linking her minions to her. Which must have included me until a couple minutes ago. Strange." He paced a few steps to either side, back and forth once, then stopped, looking at Tung. "How did you do it?"

"Do what?"

"Break the thread. Free me." He threw his hands up. "I thought they were unbreakable." His brow creased again, and he looked over Tung's head toward Ennir. "And how is she here? Am I in the past?" His eyes snapped back to Tung's face. "Who are you?"

"You ask a lot of questions," she breathed. "I'm—Lau Tung Mei. I...fight for justice."

"Justice?" The red ninja sounded surprised. "Nobler than most, aren't you?"

Tung shrugged, a little embarrassed.

"How did you get that gig? Spider bite? Nuclear accident?"

"No," Tung said, miffed. "When I was young, a man took my sister and me away to train."

The red ninja nodded. "Tragic back-story and mystical teacher."

Tung's face flushed.

"Sorry," said the ninja, cringing. "I don't know why I'm so rude." All trace of guilt vanished from his face as suddenly as it had appeared. Eagerness replaced it. "Is your sword by any chance enchanted?"

She looked at him suspiciously. "Yes...with justice."

The red ninja looked toward the ceiling and clapped his hands.

"It's not really that useful," she admitted. "It doesn't work at all against that witch."

The red ninja looked back down at her, his face going blank. "Don't you understand? It just did."

Tung shook her head in confusion.

"Listen," the red ninja said seriously, grabbing her hand. "If you're going to use justice against someone, you have to have some legitimate grievance that calls for it. I must have been enslaved unjustly, and you freed me. If it doesn't work for you, it's because she hasn't done anything to you."

"Then I still can't use it against her," Tung protested.

The red ninja shook his head. "Look around you. Those people—the nomads—with the metal teeth? They deserve justice against Ennir as much as anyone could. Lau Tung Mei, you have to fight for them."

"How do you know?" she asked doubtfully.

"I don't know. I just know." He rubbed his forehead. "She promised them protection against Shao Kahn if they helped her destroy a race of people, but when she had succeeded, she handed them over to Kahn instead. And they've spent _centuries_ forced to serve their worst enemy."

Tung looked to the battle between the nomads and the Shadow Priests and, safe in the background, Ennir. She was swatting the nomads like flies. "How do I use that?"

"It's your power, sweetheart," said the red ninja. "But if you can't use that, you can't use anything."

* * *

Ennir threw a hand to the side, and a chunk of the mutants attacking her Shadow Priests were shoveled to the side and smacked into the wall. Some escaped before hitting the wall, and they were back in the fight immediately. But even the ones who hit—hard—were back on their feet in seconds, staggering back to the fight.

This sort of drive was really irritating. Ennir threw her hand to the side, smashing some of the returning mutants back into the wall. She smashed them into the wall again and again until finally they stopped moving.

Then she turned her attention to the other side and threw some of those mutants against the wall. But even as they crawled to their feet and headed back toward her, some of the mutants on the other side—the ones she thought she'd killed already—were stirring, even sitting up.

After all that, only unconscious? Was there something wrong with her?

She looked down at her hands then out at the battle taking place before her, searching through the room for something that could be hampering her skills.

The Kitsune guard? Ennir had almost forgotten she was there, and she whipped her head back and forth until she found her, standing back from the battle to avoid being accidentally injured by one of the mutants. But on occasion, the mutants managed to separate one of the Shadow Priests from the group, and the Kitsune guard would bully it around until it managed to flee into the path of some fast-swinging mutant blade and get itself cut in half. The Kitsune, then, was no more than a nuisance and didn't seem to be paying Ennir any attention.

Kitana and Rain were locked in fierce combat, throwing swift kicks and dodging, neither noticeably dominating the other. Kitana certainly didn't have time to hamper Ennir's sorcery.

That left the Mandalorian woman. The last Ennir had seen of her, Ermac had her fully under his control, and it was only a matter of time before he killed her. But when Ennir finally found the bright red fabric of Ermac's uniform through the madness mostly blocking her view, he was completely stationary. And standing just in front of him, so was the Mandalorian woman.

They were talking.

Ennir bowed her head, frantically sorting through her threads, tugging each in turn. The mutants, suddenly unhindered, hit the barrier of Shadow Priests like a tidal wave, knocking the whole line backward. Ennir continued tugging on threads, glancing up to look for the slight change in mannerism in a Shadow Priest that meant she had stolen its attention without its realizing how.

The mutants cut down the Shadow Priests with vigor, pressing their way through the line.

And it was gone. The thread tying Ermac to her had been severed.

The Mandalorian.

The Mandalorians!

"Kill him!" she screamed, pointing at her creation. "Now!"

* * *

Tung watched as the Shadow Priests swarmed up and over the nomad's line, heading straight for her. She darted behind Ermac and picked up her sword, but as she turned to face the Shadow Priests, Ermac shoved her toward the wall.

"What are you doing?" she demanded.

"Get away!" he shouted, giving her another hard push and then scrambling backward. The Shadow Priests floated around Tung, converging on the red ninja.

She edged away in horror, staring. The red ninja just stood his ground submissively, head hung until the Shadow Priests had surrounded him, pressing in on all sides. As one, they seemed to stretch outward, like a rubber band about to snap.

The red ninja looked up.

The ceiling fell.

Tung threw herself backward, hitting the ground in time to feel the quake as the stone that had constituted the ceiling on the far half of the room hit the Shadow Priests and the Shadow Priests hit the floor.

The floor, already weakened from Tung's fight with the red ninja, gave way under the weight, crashing down to the next level. As an enormous cloud of dust rose, the holes in the ceiling and in the floor continued to grow, the stone around the edges crumbling under its own weight.

Tung scooted backward away from the gash in the floor, a bit of rock giving way under one of her feet and causing her to squeal and increase the pace.

In seconds it was over, the dust settling, only pebbles still trickling down through the holes. Through the huge gap in the floor, Tung could see the pile of rocks on the floor below, parts of the crushed bodies of Shadow Priests sticking out between some of the stones. Somewhere at the bottom of that pile was the red ninja. Tung covered her mouth and shakily got to her feet.

The creatures—the nomads—had mostly already gotten back to their feet, and they resumed their attack on the witch without hesitation. She brushed them away like dead leaves. Wave after wave of nomad attackers charged toward the witch and ended up scattered across the floor. Some of them got close enough to complete their attacks, stabbing and slashing at her viciously with the blades growing out of their arms. Some of them even connected. But the witch didn't get a scratch. It was as though, after innumerable years of aging and wickedness, she had withered entirely into stone.

But the witch seemed strangely unable to hurt the nomads. They were thwarted by her magic, thrown aside, and obviously frustrated. An unlucky nomad or two was knocked through the hole in the floor, but it was likely they survived; the fall itself wasn't that far, and the nomads looked sturdy. Even the witch seemed to notice that the carnage was less than it should have been. Her eyebrows were drawn closely together, the look of supreme confidence she had previously worn wiped away.

Tung looked at her sword, feeling like she'd never really seen it before. It was enchanted with justice, she'd been told. But that wasn't exactly what she'd been told. It was enchanted to give her the power to vanquish the unjust and protect the unjustly victimized. And the wound against the nomads was so grievous that the sword's simple presence in the room was enough to shield them from being harmed further by the monster who had wronged them.

One of the nomads backed away from the fight, breathing hard and watching it intently. He wasn't far from Tung. She cleared her throat.

"Excuse me?" she asked. "You were with Kitana earlier, right?"

The nomad looked past her, and Tung turned her head with him to watch Kitana and the ninja in purple, still fighting ferociously, dangerously close to the edge of the hole.

"We all seem to be at a stalemate," he answered grimly.

"I can fix that," Tung said. "Or rather I can help you fix that." She took a step closer to him and held out the sword.

He just looked at her, his eyebrows rising. After a moment, he lifted his arms, crossing his wrists in front of his chest so that the blades extending from them pointed in a _V_ toward the ceiling. "I've got two of those already, thank you."

Tung shook her head quickly. "This one's special. You can kill her with it."

"Why?" he sneered. "Because it's so much more well made?"

"No, because it's made to ensure that justice is carried out."

The nomad rolled his eyes, turning his head away from her.

"It's magic," she pleaded. "It's keeping your men alive."

The nomad turned back to her, the contempt on his face easing away until he reached forward suddenly, arm blades retracting back into his flesh even as he reached, so that Tung flinched away and barely managed to keep hold of the sword until he had snatched it from her hands.

The nomad charged.

* * *

Kitana wiped off the blood trickling out of her nose with the side of her wrist. The movement wrenched her shoulder, which was aching from a hard throw Rain had given her, and she scrunched up her face as she tried to relax it without dropping her guard.

Rain was bleeding from a light slice across the chest and a nastier one across his bicep. Neither seemed to slow him down much, but he was more cautious approaching her than he had been at the beginning of the fight. It didn't do much for Kitana's ego that though she was armed and he wasn't, she was having more trouble holding her own.

He was too fast—and unnaturally strong. He didn't bother throwing lightning around much—though he had tried to catch her off guard once—but she could sense him channel power into every one of his strikes, imbuing them with the force of a man twice his size while keeping his agility. It wasn't really fair when all Kitana could do with her powers was throw things at him or try to knock him off balance.

She kept her stance low as Rain came near to buffer against his extra-powerful blows. She waited until the second step he was in her range before she struck, trying to lure him so close he couldn't dodge.

But of course dodging wasn't his only option. He blocked her inward swing with the side of his wrist against the side of hers, knocking their bones together and pushing her arm and her fan safely away from him. She collapsed her other fan and stabbed toward his stomach. He turned sideways, toward his blocking arm, so that the point of her fan brushed past his back without catching any flesh. Before she could adjust her grip to stab toward his back, he brought his free arm down, swiveling from the shoulder, and smacked her in the forearm with the inside of his wrist, knocking away that arm as well.

Then he kicked her flat in the chest, and she landed on the ground on her back, skidding back a few inches. She got to her feet quickly, preparing to attack again. But then she felt that warning in the air—an increase of static electricity—and backpedaled fiercely. She realized her mistake when her right foot tried to land on nothing, and she started to tip backward, nothing between her and the floor below.

As the lightning flashed off to her right, she windmilled her arms. It didn't do much to help, and when she lost the fight and began to go over backward, she did the only thing she could, and reached out with her telekinetic powers, snagging Rain. She had never mastered the ability to push herself around with her powers, but by grabbing onto something stationary and trying it yank it toward herself, she could pull herself toward it instead, like climbing a rope.

Rain wasn't a stationary object. He stumbled forward, almost falling, dragged down by her weight. But he managed to get one of his feet far out in front of his torso, arresting his forward movement and stopping Kitana's fall. She breathed a sigh of relief. She had been afraid the damaged ceiling would crumble if she had grabbed it, but there was every possibility that Rain would be dragged down with her. She wouldn't have minded that entirely, but she had no death wish either.

She hung almost horizontal over the gap in the floor, one foot pivoting around its broken corner. She kicked her other foot up to the floor and pulled on Rain harder. He resisted even harder, inching his way backward, using the same power Kitana had felt in his blows to increase his strength and avoid being jerked forward. As he moved backward, Kitana pivoted forward, and the further she went, the easier Rain's job of pulling became until Kitana hit full vertical and let go of Rain, converting her stolen momentum into a forward dash, fans extended.

She threw caution to the wind, trying to catch him by surprise and knock him to the floor. And if her fans happened to end up between the two of them, pointy end toward him, she wasn't going to complain.

Rain wasn't surprised. He stepped to the side, and she overshot him. He helped her along with a pushing kick to the back just after she passed. The force of it knocked her off her feet, and she barely avoided a solid face plant—like her nose needed more beating. The attack had taken her so far, she was practically in the pack of nomads, and their feet shuffled and stomped around her head and hands.

She pushed herself to her feet quickly, losing her grip on one of her fans, which was stuck beneath a nomad's foot. Rain was already beside her as she turned. He grabbed the wrist of her armed hand and wrapped his other hand around her throat, picking her up and throwing her against the wall, pinning her legs with his body.

She scrabbled toward his eyes with her free hand. He leaned backward, letting her feet slip toward the ground until he could take advantage of his greater height and longer arms to keep her legs, her arm, and her throat securely pinned to the wall while remaining safely out of reach.

Kitana scraped her fingernails down his arm and reached out toward her lost fan with her telekinetic powers. It was under the foot of different nomad, and she gave him a little shove, trying to knock him off of it. The nomad rocked on his feet, but his low stance, protection against Ennir's telekinesis, also protected against Kitana's.

"Coming through!" a nomad suddenly shouted.

The nomads instantly scattered, dragging Shadow Priests with them, and Kitana saw Djurash holding a thin sword with both hands, running through the opening gap toward Ennir.

Rain, who had turned his head when he heard the shout, saw him too. He dropped Kitana like an annoying girlfriend and started toward Ennir. Kitana took a step away from the wall and fell into a crouch, swinging one of her legs and catching Rain in the shins. He hit the ground on his face.

As Rain shook his head once from the blow and started to push himself to his feet, Ennir shoved her palm toward Djurash over and over, trying to shove him off his path. But her attacks hit him with no more power than a mild gust of wind, and when he reached the proper range, he planted his feet and swung the sword in a gigantic arc. Ennir moved her hand in an intercept course, trying to catch the blade as she had so many other blades during the fight. It sliced clean through her hand and continued its flight to cleave her in half.

Rain was only half off the ground, one knee still down, but he had seen it all. Kitana skirted around him, retrieving her lost fan without taking her eyes off him or lowering her guard. But he didn't move. He stayed in his awkward position, shoulders slumped, as he stared at Ennir's fallen body.

Kitana approached him cautiously. When she was a few feet away, he suddenly stumbled to his feet and grabbed her. With his right hand, he wrenched her left wrist hard enough to knock the fan out of it. Then he wrapped both of his hands around her right wrist, trying to tilt the collapsed blade up and back around toward her.

She put her left hand on top of his hands, pushing against him, resisting as hard as she could. But there was no way she could win a contest of strength against him.

She pulled her left hand away just long enough to smack him in the ear with its heel. His head jerked to the side at impact, but otherwise, he ignored the blow. Frantically, she returned her left hand to the struggle. He had already turned the fan most of the way to vertical, and her arms were shaking with fatigue. She tried to kick him between the legs, but he anticipated her strike and got one of his legs up in time to stop her kick from connecting with its target, pushing her leg back to the ground and stepping on her foot.

While she was still off-balance, he jerked on her hands, suddenly pulling on the blade instead of pushing it. The blade of the fan slid up under his rib cage. Kitana let go with her left hand, pulling back, trying to get away from him. He eased his grip just enough to allow her to slip away, leaving her to watch in horror as he pushed the blade in as far as it would go.

"Well done, princess," he spat, jerking the fan back out of his body. Blood flooded out after it. Rain fell to his knees before finally collapsing face first on the ground.

"What?" demanded Djurash from right behind Kitana. "What did _you_ do?"


	32. Chapter Thirty

**Transposition**  
by Nyohah

**Chapter Thirty**

* * *

Noob Saibot walked listlessly down a hall in what had once been Shao Kahn's palace. He walked openly, not bothering to conceal himself in the shadows. There was no point anymore. All his plans had unraveled, and, well beyond merely being set back, he was starting to doubt he'd ever get them started back up again. He only wanted to regain what had been stolen from him...

He would feel better if he could find the Demon Master. But no matter where he looked, there was no sign of the entity on which everything hinged. What use was there in being the last man standing if the prospect of victory was gone?

And he was the last man standing. He'd felt it when Ennir died. The sensation of his obligations to her being released was like gasping in fresh air after nearly drowning. But he had never resented the forced loyalty—not after what she'd done for him—and so it ultimately made him more sad than relieved. And the new Number Two had been with her at the time. It was impossible that the Earth warriors could have taken her down and let him live.

Vendetta had snuffed it hours ago. There hadn't been a real Number Seven or Number Eight for years. The last he'd seen of Shao Kahn was a glimpse of him getting all his limbs cut to ribbons by a bouncing whirl of red that _might_ have been a man, but it was hard to tell from the sounds it made. And Number Three was a traitor, probably even now hunting down the one she should have been serving. That left only—

"Noob Saibot," came a voice from behind him. "How the mighty have fallen."

* * *

The shadow ninja stopped and turned. He and Sub-Zero stared each other down for a full two seconds. Then the shadow ninja started forward, not hurrying.

"Number Seven," Sub-Zero added.

The effect was immediate and much stronger than Sub-Zero had expected. Noob Saibot stumbled off balance, hemorrhaging inky vapor, and hit the floor hard on his knees. Most of the vapor leaking from his body dissipated quickly, but some of it remained, clouding around him.

"What was that?" Noob Saibot asked, breathless.

"You heard what I said," Sub-Zero answered.

Noob Saibot forced a laugh. "You're off by one. It's Number Six. I thought you knew Edenian." He got to his feet ponderously.

"I do," Sub-Zero answered, holding up Ennir's journal.

Noob Saibot glanced at the book, but it was obvious he had no idea what it was.

"My brother was always taking things apart when we were younger," said Sub-Zero. "My parents would get so angry, telling him not to break things. But he said that if he took them apart, he would know how they worked, and then he could put them back together so they wouldn't be broken."

"That's nice," said Noob Saibot, clearly nonplussed. He headed for Sub-Zero again, quickly this time, vapor trailing off his body as he moved. But he was slower than he had been, and Sub-Zero easily blocked the first punch, grabbing his wrist with his free hand, then twisting and pulling to put the shadow ninja on his back on the floor.

"He was right—my brother," said Sub-Zero, dropping the shadow ninja's wrist and stepping away from him. "But I've come to realize his views work in reverse as well. If you know how something works, then you _can_ take it apart—and break it—even if it resisted you before."

"This is news?" asked Noob Saibot, looking up at him from the floor and breathing hard.

"No, this is news: I know how to take you apart."

Noob Saibot rolled back onto his shoulders, throwing his feet up and toward Sub-Zero's head. Sub-Zero backed away and let Noob Saibot get to his feet, then kicked him in the face. The blow sent Noob Saibot windmilling backward, cracking his head on the wall and slumping to the floor. He was slow to rise.

"And this fighting stuff," continued Sub-Zero, "isn't how it's done." He paused. "You're made of secrets. Ennir put you together, using three big ones to tie you to existence. You lurk in the shadows, gathering as many others as you can to increase your strength—but those three," Sub-Zero stressed, thumping the journal, "are the only ones I have to say to undo you."

Noob Saibot panted, using the wall for support as he got to his feet. His eyes had narrowed, the electric blue glow seeming to spark toward Sub-Zero.

"I bet you'd like to kill me quickly to stop me revealing any more, wouldn't you?" Sub-Zero taunted. "But the one I've already revealed weakened you so much, it _has_ to be true. You're the original Number Seven."

"Who else ever had a shot?" Noob Saibot snarled.

"Lots of people, throughout history," Sub-Zero said calmly. "And some of them got considerably farther than you did."

"They had a head start," Noob Saibot replied, moving away from the wall, some of his old swagger back. "Stand on the shoulders of giants, and it's amazing what you accomplish—but it doesn't make you better than the giants."

Sub-Zero inclined his head to the side. "Don't get me wrong; I wish _I_ had multiple cities named after me. But I think I'm starting to see what took you down: this idea you got that you should be treated as a god. Nobody likes _that_ guy."

"That had _nothing to do with it_," Noob Saibot spat. "It was envy, pure and simple."

"Envy of your godly and very large self?" Sub-Zero asked with a chuckle.

"Envy of my position as Number Seven!" Noob Saibot shouted, his airy voice shrill.

Sub-Zero rocked back on his heels, feeling suddenly like his brother, taking the pieces he'd scattered across the floor and piecing them back together to reconstruct the workings of the world.

"Shang Tsung killed you," he realized.

Noob Saibot twisted in agony, another explosion of black vapor blowing away from his body and leaving him vague and insubstantial, back on his knees again, wisping black smoke.

"H-how did you—?" he breathed, his voice more air than sound.

"My brother has theories," Sub-Zero answered, still shocked himself. "He was trying to figure out why Shang Tsung gave up his right to go to Earth. It's because you already represented Earth."

"It's because he was an _idiot_!" Noob Saibot shouted. "He thought the lower the number, the more power he would have." He laughed bitterly. "He didn't figure it out until the Demon Master asked me to be Number Seven."

"And then he stabbed you in the chest?" asked Sub-Zero.

"No points for guessing," Noob Saibot answered savagely. "I was laid up in Babylon, sick from..." He shook his head. "Something. I don't even know. But I wasn't worried. Why would I worry? The Demon Master promised to keep me young forever so I could continue my conquest. He wouldn't let me die of a _fever_."

"What happened?" Sub-Zero asked, genuinely curious.

Noob Saibot drew a deep breath. "Shang Tsung disguised himself and came to see me while I was sick, saying he was bringing me good medicine and the blessing of the gods. When he told me who he was, you couldn't imagine how much it relieved me. I hadn't yet realized he was the poison in our ranks. It's good he stayed dead this time." Noob Saibot paused, looking down at his chest. "He used a magic blade, so the wound sealed up on both sides when he pulled it out. Then he just walked out of the room and told everyone he was too late and they should pay their last respects quickly. And as I lay there, gasping for every breath, filling up with blood and air, he just smirked and waited and thought he was going to get a promotion."

"But he didn't," Sub-Zero prompted.

"Of course not!" Noob Saibot spat. "He had no qualifications even if he _had_ still been eligible."

"And he was ineligible because he had given up his birthright on Earth?"

Noob Saibot jerked his head in a reluctant nod. "He made himself a citizen of Outworld so he could be Number Two, not realizing that wasn't what he wanted. And then he didn't figure out that meant the only promotion he could get was to Number One until _after_ he'd killed me." He snorted bitterly.

"That is painfully ironic," Sub-Zero agreed.

"What's _ironic_," Noob Saibot said, working up to a rant again, "is that before that time, he relied on his cunning to get what he wanted, but he couldn't even figure out what that was. When he did—when he realized that Number One was all he had to look forward to, _that_ was when he started hunting for real power, so that he could one day challenge Kahn." Noob Saibot paused, then added, still bitter, "He went after Ennir first. When she lost her powers, she lost her Number Six, and that's when she brought me back." He shook his head. "I could have stopped him if she'd brought me back sooner."

Sub-Zero nodded, considering. "You know," he said finally, "for someone who studied under Aristotle, you're just not very bright."

Noob Saibot's eyes narrowed again. "Watch your tongue."

"But you shouldn't be telling me...anything," Sub-Zero said. "Any secret you reveal just makes you even weaker."

Noob Saibot laughed. "I've waited _twenty-three hundred_ years to tell someone what happened. You think I'm going to hold back when the end has come?" He looked up at Sub-Zero, weary. "I don't have a chance left, do I?"

Sub-Zero shook his head. "I know everything. Who you really were: your name, your position. And who killed you. Ennir never even knew that. It's not in the book. What's in the book just says that was the most important thing keeping you here, binding you together in this mortal world."

"And _you_ figured it out," Noob Saibot grumbled. "Nobody saw that coming."

Sub-Zero shrugged, feeling exhausted. "Guess I just came to the right conclusion for the wrong reasons."

"I appreciate the irony," said Noob Saibot, still sounding petulant.

They were both silent and still for nearly a minute. "If I say your name," Sub-Zero said finally, "then that's it."

Noob Saibot hung his head. Sub-Zero could see all the details of the tapestry behind him through his hazy, insubstantial figure. "Don't," he said simply.

Sub-Zero hesitated. "Even gods die," he said, finally. "I'm sorry, Alexander. But if you ally with evil, it will eat you. Believe me; I know."

The shadow ninja was gone long before he finished speaking.

* * *

White blotched with red floated across Ching's vision, and pain stabbed through her head, echoing down her limbs like insect stings and little burns. The sensation was not unfamiliar, and she fought against it, struggling to free herself like she had for months in that little stone-walled room. The difference was immense; during her time in that room, she had always felt she was drowning, but this time she felt more like she was treading water, staying afloat, and then she summoned her strength for a great shove, and the pressure gave way, backing away into a merely dizzying hum.

She found herself on her knees in the middle of the tunnel, panting. Behind her, Yuan called her name, sounding frightened. Ching raised her head and stared the Demon Master in the face. She pushed harder, and the buzz cleared up entirely, but when she tried to move beyond her mind and into his, it was like hitting a wall. She kept trying, pushing harder than she thought she ever could, trying to get through, but it was like trying to burrow with a blunt instrument. The wall held fast.

Ching gasped and sat back, letting go. The pain returned immediately. She heard herself scream and choked it off, forcing herself to pull up more energy and push the Demon Master's presence most of the way out of her mind again.

As her skin crawled, Yuan said her name again, sounding even more pathetic. She turned her head to look back at him. He had stepped closer to her and was awkwardly on the verge of crouching, wanting to kneel beside her but unwilling to take his eyes off the Demon Master.

Sweat ran off Ching's forehead, trickling down the side off her cheek before dripping onto the concrete. "Yuan," she repeated until he looked at her. Then she snarled, "_Hurt him_."

Yuan's eyes widened, but he quickly whirled into a kick. It looked like he would miss the Demon Master entirely, but when the kick ended, he had the fingers of the Demon Master's pasty hand crushed between his heel and the ice wall. Bones crunched, and brittle long fingernails cracked and scattered across the concrete.

The Demon Master grimaced but made no noise. Still, the pressure in Ching's head nearly vanished, and she got to her feet, hardly noticing the movement as she tried to follow his mental retreat closely enough to break through his defenses. It didn't work.

The Demon Master turned on Yuan, grabbing him around the neck with his uninjured hand and lifting him into the air, his long fingernails sticking out well behind Yuan's neck. Ching started forward, but the Demon Master moved his broken hand toward her, making the same gesture with his mangled fingers that his good ones made on Yuan's neck. A tightening force snagged her by the neck, lifting her off the ground just like Yuan.

She fought against the telekinetic grip, trying to push it away like she did the invasions of her mind. Her efforts weren't nearly as effective against this kind of attack, but she did manage to loosen the hold, allowing her to take a deep, gasping breath before it tightened again.

Yuan fought, too, but with even less success. He grabbed the wrist holding him up, using it to pull his body into the air, like he was doing gymnastics. He slammed his heel into the Demon Master's face, smashing his nose and snapping his head back so fast the headdress toppled off, rolling off the side of the tunnel's wall and freeing the Demon Master's long, thin white hair. But the Demon Master didn't relinquish his grip, and Yuan started kicking him in the stomach, using both hands to futilely twist at the wrist holding him up.

*As soon as I destroy either one of your bodies,* the Demon Master said, the words leaking directly into Ching's brain, *you've lost. But if you destroy mine, you haven't won.*

"I remember," she grunted.

*And you're afraid,* he gloated.

"But so are you," she countered. "After all—" She had to stop and force his grip to loosen before she could take a breath and finish. "—I am my mother's daughter."

The grip on Ching's neck faltered, and she fell back to the ground, landing easily. The Demon Master unceremoniously dropped Yuan, who hit the ground hard and bent over, coughing and gasping. But Ching didn't have time to be concerned about him. The Demon Master immediately flew toward her in a high jumping kick.

She hopped out of the way and sent her own spinning kick toward him as he landed. He ducked under her kick, spinning to try to sweep her foot out from underneath her. But she finished her kick in time to jump. He was trying to kick her again even before she landed, and she blocked it, the force throwing her back so that her landing was a little shaky. But she didn't fall, and her quick recovery startled him enough that her axe kick connected with his shoulder, sending him to the ground on one knee. They each dodged several more of the other's blows, each viciously fast, before the Demon Master caught Ching on the ear with the side of his uninjured hand. As she stumbled to the side, he hit her again and again, so that the blows rang through her head.

And for the first time, even after all Yuan's assertions, Ching was completely sure that they were right. The power of the mind and the power of the body didn't depend very much on each other, but disrupt one enough, and the other would be disrupted, too. The Demon Master was trying to do to her exactly what she was trying to do to him: beat him until he couldn't concentrate anymore.

As she was staggering away from the Demon Master's blows, trying to block them on her forearms but not entirely succeeding, Yuan came up beside the Demon Master and hit him with a spinning kick so powerful it sent him flying into the side of the tunnel, where he crumpled, all wrinkled robes and tangled limbs.

Yuan stepped around to stand beside her, facing the Demon Master. He gave her a little reassuring smile. She gave him a nod.

And then the Demon Master was floating to his feet. He came at them spinning, keeping his feet off the ground, his limbs flying in fast, hard circles. There was no precision to his movements, but in the cramped tunnel, it was hard to avoid him and almost impossible to hit him without being hit in return. But Ching and Yuan had the advantage of numbers on him, and when Yuan got hit by the Demon Master, the sudden resistance to his spin stopped him long enough for Ching to get in a good strike. Likewise, when Ching was hit, an opening formed for Yuan.

Ching didn't know how long they went on like that, but the longer they fought, the less she paid attention to the fight's physical side. The Demon Master continued to put pressure on her mind, and she was in a constant struggle to keep him out. But it was getting easier. After every hit they scored on him, she pushed again, trying to break through to his mind, and every time, it seemed the wall was a little more pliable.

After a particularly successful attempt, when Ching had felt a brief elation at the possibility of finally being able to put an end to him, the Demon Master increased the speed of his spin and rose up to the ceiling. He clung there, barely out of Ching and Yuan's reach. They traded looks again, but before Ching could get up onto Yuan's shoulders, the Demon Master spoke to her again.

*What weak attempts you make to harm me,* he said. *You will never have the power over me I have over you.*

He redoubled his attempts to cripple her mind. Ss she beat back a sudden pounding headache, eyes squeezed shut, she felt herself actually smile.

"No," she said, heaving him out of her mind again, "I'll have so much more." She raised her head again. Noticing Yuan's confused look, she realized the Demon Master was talking to her alone. Looking farther up, she met the Demon Master's stare. "I am stronger than you."

The Demon Master dropped to the ground suddenly, kicking Yuan in the face as he fell. Yuan stumbled away, turning around and clutching his mouth. As the Demon Master spun to face Ching, she kicked him in the face, knocking him backward. The Demon Master recovered quickly, and as he came toward Ching again, she prepared another forceful side kick. Yuan, his lip split and bleeding, hopped toward the Demon Master on his back leg, also preparing a side kick with his raised leg.

Their kicks connected at the same time, sending the Demon Master flying back into the side of the tunnel. His head cracked against the concrete, but he wasn't stunned.

*I own you,* the Demon Master hissed into Ching's mind, standing up. *Even now, you can't keep my voice out. You have no hope of defeating me. Your only hope is to—*

"Oh, shut up," Ching retorted. "If I wasn't stronger than you, we wouldn't be fighting!"

"It's obvious!" Yuan shouted suddenly, and Ching had a moment of alarm as she wondered whether the Demon Master was also talking to him, telling him different things. But then he looked at her, eyebrows raised, looking for confirmation. "We have proof," he added, and Ching understood him and nodded.

The Demon Master gave Yuan a wary look but chose to approach Ching instead. He spun in a high roundhouse kick, which Ching ducked, planting her fist in his stomach as she rose. The Demon Master pulled back his good hand to attack her again.

"She killed you once before!" Yuan shouted, causing the Demon Master to hesitate. Ching punched him in the face.

The Demon Master didn't react to that, slowly turning to look at Yuan. Yuan stood his ground. "And we _know_ it wasn't a fluke," he continued. "She'll do it again."

The Demon Master attacked. As Yuan dodged and countered, Ching tried to force her way into the Demon Master's mind again. The wall she expected to encounter felt almost like putty instead, and she dug through it, trying to find the end.

She was concentrating so intently on her mental foray that she didn't realize the Demon Master had turned away from Yuan again until she felt his foot hit her in the chest. She stumbled backward and landed on her rear, sliding backward through the slime.

"She broke out of your influence!" Yuan shouted, drawing the Demon Master away from her again. "You tried to take away her life and make her your most devoted servant, but she recovered the memories you stole and turned against you."

The Demon Master backhanded him across the face, but Yuan didn't even try to block, standing his ground until he'd finished what he was saying. Ching stabbed into the Demon Master's mind, slicing through layers of defenses, but still not reaching far enough to do any damage.

The Demon Master turned to her again, baring his teeth, but before he could even reach her, Yuan was shouting.

"You can't even keep ahold of her mind to torture her. You tried after Shao Kahn's tournament, but she was awake before I rescued her, awake before we removed that collar—"

Yuan took a foot to the stomach and doubled over, grunting. Ching prepared to dive into the Demon Master's mind again, but he spoke, stopping her.

*These things you did, they took you months, years.* He clapsed his hands behind his back and faced her, calmly. *Do you think we will fight here for months?*

"You've missed the point," Ching said, then realized that even after all the time spent obsessing over the prophecies and trying to avert them, all the time spent trying to keep Ching and Yuan apart, her enemies had never figured them out. "You've seen my power, but you never understood it. My mother was strong, and I got this power from her. Even by myself, I may even be stronger than she was. But those prophecies never told you to worry about me. They don't tell you to worry about him. They tell you to worry about what will happen to you when we're together. You see," she finished, with a twisted smile, "whoever's in charge of all this saw fit to make me strong enough to destroy you—but only when this kid is around."

Behind the Demon Master, she could see Yuan narrow his eyes at her, annoyed at being called a kid. But he didn't say anything, and when the Demon Master slowly turned around to look at him, he dropped the irritated expression, adopting one more of challenge. Then he fell to the ground with a yelp, clutching his head.

Ching didn't think; she just dropped through the floor and reappeared above the Demon Master's back, extending her leg so as she fell, she hit him at the nape of the neck with her foot. She drove down with more force than usual, knocking him forward onto his face and landing on top of him. As they hit the ground, all her weight on his neck, she heard a crunch. But she wasn't done. She straddled his back, slamming his face into the ground again and again until she saw Yuan shakily getting up, his face pale.

The Demon Master wasn't moving, not even twitching, when she tried for what she hoped would be the last time to force her way into his mind so that she could break it. The resistance she felt was like gelatin, impeding her path, but not so much that she couldn't break her way through it. The problem was no matter how much she broke through, there was more to get through, and after nearly a minute of digging, she gave up and stood, deeply frustrated and desperate to get away from the Demon Master's broken body.

She paced in front of his body, her hand over her mouth. She had never had Yuan's total confidence that they could win, but she had been sure that if she could weaken his body enough, she could break down his mental defenses as well. Yuan came up beside her, still trembling a little and looking concerned. Ching just shook her head and kept pacing.

She felt the Demon Master's presence back in her head before he moved. Yuan tensed beside her as the Demon Master flopped onto his back, looking up at her with more hatred on his face than she had ever seen before. The depth of his feeling brought to her mind the last time she had killed him, and she realized what she had been doing wrong.

As the Demon Master increased the pressure on her mind until the pain was blinding, she grabbed Yuan's hand. He instantly began to keen and fell back onto his knees, but she kept a tight grip of his hand and dropped all of her mental defenses, inviting the Demon Master in.

She felt his mind flood into hers, filling her thoughts and her senses, even controlling the rate at which she breathed. And then, as he settled in and turned up the pain, Yuan squeezing her hand so hard she could feel it even through the Demon Master's subjugation, she wrenched her thoughts away to things that gave her peace.

The Demon Master instantly bucked, trying to retreat, but it was too late. Ching held him in her mind as easily as she had pushed him out before. And she thought. She thought about her family: her father, her sister, the mother she never knew but who had passed on her gift. The Demon Master writhed inside her mind, but she forced him down, forced him to settle in like he had before, so all her thoughts became his thoughts.

Thoughts of her sister turned to thoughts of Chat, which turned to remembrances of how she had defeated the Demon Master before. As she remembered the feel of cool wind on her back, remembering how it had caught her fall, her thoughts turned naturally to Yuan, and she felt his mind fall into place with hers and gently turn to thoughts of his family, his family's friends, his hometown.

The Demon Master's struggles became more and more feeble until they stopped completely, and his mind moved in complete concert with hers, all pain gone. She reached out and gently severed the connection between the Demon Master and her mind, and the sense of overfullness in her mind vanished, leaving her alone.

When she opened her eyes, Yuan was climbing off the ground, pulling on her arm to help himself. He looked ill, wiping sweat off his forehead, but he gave her a small smile. He had lost control of his elemental powers during the ordeal, and clear water from his ice wall ran over their feet.

The Demon Master was shriveling, mummifying before their eyes. After less than a minute, the process finished, leaving him nothing but a twisted husk dwarfed by his white silk brocade robes. Yuan stepped forward and prodded it with his foot, and it crumpled into dust, which was washed away by the water running down the tunnel.

"I sure hope he stays dead," said Yuan, as the water rose above their ankles and the robes began to float away. "Do you think we did it?"


	33. Epilogue: Natural

**Transposition**  
by Nyohah

Epilogue:  
**Natural**  
Two Years After MK1

* * *

Kitana stood on the balcony overlooking the arena, watching as Centaurions disappeared through the portal to their homeworld. Outworld was slowly letting go of the planets that had constituted it, restoring them to their proper places in space. The process seemed to be progressing from newest addition to oldest, so Edenia had already been restored, but, as the closest thing left to a leader Outworld had, Kitana felt an obligation to ensure everyone got home safely.

She could see the young Mandalorian woman standing beside the portal, fidgeting nervously as each massive horse-man stepped through. Kitana, Mileena, and Sub-Zero had agreed that the monumental task of sorting out all of the different races of Outworld, finding their homeworlds, and sending them there could wait a few days. But the Shokans and the Centaurions were still surly toward each other and everyone else, and Kitana had decided it was best to treat them as an emergency and get them isolated as soon as possible. The young portal maker was itching to get back home, but she had agreed to stay long enough to do so, as long as there was someone around to protect her. Understandably, she wasn't comfortable with a nomad filling that role, but luckily, the surviving Edenian fighter had also decided to stay behind and help.

Even without her antlers, Mistral towered over the Mandalorian woman. With them, the Centaurions didn't seem to know what to make of her or her defiant stance. They were used to meaty little humanoids stepping lightly around them, not looking like they wanted to pick a fight. Kitana watched as Mistral bared her teeth back at a Centaurion who had snarled at her, and she made up her mind, climbing over the balcony's railing and lowering herself onto the seating below.

In a couple of minutes, she had wound her way around the queued Centaurions and reached the side of the portal. She faced Mistral, looking up at her, then started to speak but hesitated, her mouth hanging open. "I—I'm sorry your friend died," she finally managed.

Mistral looked down at her, her face distrustful. After a few seconds, she looked away. "I didn't know her very long. But for a while we were the only two people in our world."

Kitana nodded. "I had a friend. I worked with her for years, and she was always taking care of me. Rain killed her, too."

Mistral didn't answer, instead resuming her stare-down with the Centaurions galloping through the portal.

"I've read about the Kitsune guard," Kitana continued, feeling awkward. "They're very impressive."

Mistral still didn't speak, and Kitana began to wring her hands, withering. "I guess what I'm saying is—" Her voice trailed off, and she took another breath, steeling herself. "Perhaps we could be a team now."

Mistral finally looked back down at her. "You want me to be your bodyguard."

Kitana nodded.

"I accept," said Mistral. "My duty for now is to protect this girl." And she glared at a Centaurion who was slow going through the portal.

Kitana blinked but didn't argue. She heard laughter behind her and turned to see Djurash and the captain looking very amused.

"You can't even have a servant properly," said Djurash. "What a princess."

"Shut up," Kitana said, stepping away from Mistral. "I don't want to offend her."

"Because you're afraid she'll smash you?" asked the captain.

"Actually," said Djurash, "this makes me relieved. I was worried about how badly Edenia would fare with only the princess to run it, but it seems this antlered woman will actually be in charge, and she _can't_ be as hopeless as the princess."

"Well, the princess has her mother," said the captain. "I hear she wasn't hopeless."

Djurash shrugged. "She was when I met her, but then—"

"You locked her in a closet!" Kitana shouted.

"I was going to say, 'she's obviously not well'," Djurash corrected, not looking the least bit ashamed.

Kitana glared. "You're making it hard for me to be grateful."

"You're not supposed to be grateful to people who lock your mother in a closet," said the captain.

Kitana closed her eyes. "That's not what I meant."

"I think she's grateful to see the back of us," said Djurash.

She shook her head. "That's not what I meant either." She opened her eyes to see them looking at her curiously. "Thank you for all of your help," she said seriously. "You must know we couldn't have done it without you."

They looked genuinely flustered. "Oh," Djurash said, "well, I guess we couldn't have done it without you either."

Kitana smiled. "That's not true."

"No," Djurash agreed. "We don't owe you nearly as much as that friend of yours with the sword, but—we'll happily thank anyone who helped us torch that witch."

"I'm still jealous, though," said the captain.

Djurash crossed his arms and adopted a stance of long-suffering.

"Why?" asked Kitana, still smiling.

The captain jerked his thumb toward Djurash. "_He_ got to kill the witch, and all I got was Motaro."

Kitana glanced nervously at the Centaurions, but none of them seemed to have heard. "Let's try not to talk about that in front of this crowd," she said.

Djurash looked back at her, serious. "How is your mother?"

Kitana forced herself to smile again. "I'm optimistic," she said.

"Right," said Djurash, unconvinced. "Well, if you bring her to visit us, make sure she's not going to attack first."

Kitana nodded and watched as the nomads walked away from her. They climbed the stands up to the balcony and jumped easily onto it, headed for what had been Kahn's throne room, where they were waiting for Outworld to relinquish its grip on their planet and give them a home.

* * *

"This feels strange."

Yuan turned his head to look at Ching as they continued their sunset stroll down Yanxubin's main street. "What?" he asked. "Not having a sacred destiny anymore?"

She gave him a look. "No, _having_ that was strange."

"Not having to worry about the Demon Master?" he tried.

She shook her head. "No, leaving."

Yuan turned his head and looked at the shops they were walking past. None of them had reopened since the Lin Kuei had shut them down a couple of days before. The few people his age he saw wandering around looked shellshocked. He shrugged. "We'll adjust. Anyway, I think things will be less weird once all the older people go back to the lives they knew. Maybe things will change."

"But the population of an entire city just disappearing, leaving behind the stripped buildings? It's strange."

Yuan grinned. "I want to see the news reports, that's for sure. Conspiracy theorists are going to have a field day. They're such nutballs."

Ching raised an eyebrow at him. "So you have no belief in supernatural phenomenon."

Yuan scoffed. "There's always a rational explanation."

Ching stopped walking and covered her face with both hands.

"I mean it," said Yuan. "Take this soon-to-be ghost town for instance. Its inhabitants were really aliens in exile who took the opportunity to go home. Perfectly rational."

Ching, still shaking her head at him, hit him lightly in the chest with the back of her hand as they set off down the road again.

They had just reached the blast zone from Chat's dynamite when darkness suddenly fell, like the sunset had been cut short. Yuan looked up to see dark clouds rolling in over their heads. Lightning began to dance in the clouds, and thunder echoed off the buildings. Yuan and Ching exchanged a glance, then ran down the street toward the storm's center.

Kung Lao and Liu Kang reached it ahead of them, looking warily up at the storm.

"What demon is this?" demanded Liu Kang.

"Beats me," said Kung Lao. "Looks a bit like Shao Kahn, though."

"Impossible!" shouted Liu Kang.

"Maybe his cousin?" Kung Lao shrugged.

"That's not funny," said Sonya, arriving with Jax just as a flash of lightning hit the ground at their feet and coalesced into Raiden.

"Was that necessary?" Yuan asked, rubbing his eyes.

The thunder god ignored him. "I bring you congratulations," he said solemnly, looking around at them. "Shao Kahn has been defeated. Ennir has been defeated. Even the Demon Master has been defeated."

"We know," Yuan said, irritated. "We were there."

Raiden continued to ignore him. "The realms that Shao Kahn stole are even now being restored, ready for their survivors to return. You have all done well."

"Yeah, we were there," Yuan repeated.

Liu Kang shot him a glare before bowing deeply. "Thank you, Raiden," he said, nearly as solemn as the thunder god. "To gain your approval even once is more than any mere mortal could ever hope to achieve."

Yuan had to fight to keep himself from gagging.

"Are you prepared to depart?" asked Raiden. "I will teleport you to your homes."

"But you don't have to go yet," Yuan cut in quickly. "Mr. Yen is throwing this huge party before we leave for Mandalore."

"I will leave as soon as possible," said Liu Kang, and Ching laughed.

"And, sorry," said Sonya, "but we really have to get back to Fort Myer before our leave is over."

"This is your vacation?" Yuan asked, stunned.

Sonya nodded.

"Wow," said Kung Lao. "If this is what the U.S. military does on its vacations, no wonder it rules the Earth."

Sonya scowled. "We really had better get back before someone gets hurt," she said.

"It was a joke!" Kung Lao protested. "A joke!"

"I have to agree," said Ching, pulling on Yuan's arm. "It's probably best to keep you two separated."

Kung Lao adjusted his hat and began to walk backward toward Raiden. "I won't say it wasn't any fun," he said, "but we are all very, very crazy."

When Kung Lao got close enough, Raiden reached out his arms, and the four Earth warriors were hit by bolts of lightning, which zapped them all away. The sky cleared.

Ching turned to Yuan. "I don't recall Mr. Yen offering any party."

"Shh," he answered.

"Sorry, excuse me," said someone from behind them.

Yuan and Ching turned. Ching's sister had come up the street behind them, accompanied by her husband.

"Not you, too, Tungsten," Yuan lamented.

Her eyebrows creased together, but she ignored him, taking her sister's hand. For a moment she was silent. "I don't know what to say," she confessed. "Goodbye doesn't seem enough."

"You're sure you won't come?" asked Ching.

Tung shook her head. "Hong Kong is my home. And my husband's home."

"It's not goodbye forever," Yuan cut in. "Mulan can still make portals."

Tung smiled. "And we'll visit."

Ching smiled back and then, after a moment of hesitation, pulled her into a hug.

The revving of a motorcycle engine broke up the moment. Chat slid to a stop next to them, goggles over her eyes. "Don't say goodbye without me," she protested.

"Never," said Tung.

"So, goodbye, then," said Chat. "Where are you going?"

"Hong Kong," answered Tung.

"Mandalore," said Ching.

Chat cocked her head to one side. "I'm going to travel."

"Ah," said Tung. "Have fun." She waved to them then walked back to join her husband. Together they headed down the street, back toward Mr. Yen's house, where Inspector Lau had left his car.

"So," said Chat, drawing out the syllable, and lifting her goggles to look at Yuan. "I heard you were a prince."

Yuan blinked. "Uh, that's right."

Chat rubbed her fingers together. "This bike doesn't fuel itself."

"Think of me as a poor, deposed prince," Yuan answered. "Like Anastasia. If she were a prince."

"What?" Chat looked baffled. "Your parents aren't king and queen again?"

"No," Yuan answered shortly. "I don't think people want that."

Chat's brow furrowed. "Then who's running your planet?"

"I thought we might try this little thing called democracy."

"Huh," Chat mused. Then she pointed back and forth between Ching and Yuan. "You know, you two should be king and queen since you saved them all."

Yuan looked over at Ching, who just barely managed to meet his eyes before they both burst out laughing.

Chat watched them try to stop laughing for a few seconds then revved her engine again. "Well, if you change your minds..." She rubbed her fingers together again, then put one foot up on the pedal, preparing to kick off.

"Wait!" Yuan shouted. "You don't want to stay for the party?"

Chat gave him a wicked smile. "I have my own party."

A former Lin Kuei came out of nowhere and hopped onto the back of Chat's motorcycle. Yuan jumped, startled, as Chat revved the engine a few more times, her eyebrows dancing, then sped off.

"And there's that," Yuan said, waving his hand after her.

Ching laughed. "I bet her party's better than yours would be," she teased.

"Yeah," Yuan admitted.

"I guess you're just going to have to give up all your dreams of a party in disgrace."

"There's no party?" asked Yuan's father, suddenly behind them.

Yuan whirled to face him.

"That's a real shame," his father continued. "It's been a quarter of a century since I've been to good party, and then they tried to kill me at the end of it."

"That's great," said Yuan. "Where's Mom?"

* * *

Sub-Zero was headed down a side street away from Yanxubin's main street, not at all keen to run into Raiden, when someone caught him by the arm. He moved to jerk his arm away angrily, glancing over his shoulder to see who was bothering him, but the look on his mother's face made him stop and turn more gently.

"Nei Jen," she said. "Thank you."

"Oh," he answered, embarrassed. "It was nothing."

His mother shook her head. "The rest of us could have fought that shadow ninja for years while he remained impervious. If you hadn't figured out how to kill him..."

He shifted uncomfortably. "That was mostly luck."

"Honor offered to sacrifice himself to destroy the shadow ninja—and it may not even have worked." She clutched tightly at his hand. "You avenged one friend and saved the other."

"Oh," he said quickly, "I wasn't—"

"I know you didn't do it for me," she interrupted, "but it still means everything."

She was about to cry. He glanced to his left and right in alarm, then grabbed her and pulled her into a hug.

She did cry then, into his shoulder. After about a minute, she pulled away, rubbing at her face and the wet spot on his shoulder. "Are you coming with us?" she asked, not looking up at him.

He had been torn about it until that moment. "I suppose so."

She finally looked back up at him, smiling. "That was a very kind thing you did for Tanya."

Sub-Zero shrugged. "She genuinely helped us. I couldn't leave her there to face the lynch mob."

"Yes," his mother answered knowingly, "she's very pretty."

"I'll probably have to start beating her away with a broomstick in a couple of weeks." He ran a hand through his hair. "Have you seen, her, though? I'm trying to find her."

His mother gave him another smile, pointed back past his ear, dropped her hand to pat him on the shoulder, and walked away.

Sub-Zero hadn't made it two steps before someone grabbed his arm again. He jumped, startled, and spun around, jerking his arm out of the person's grip and shouting, "What?"

Enmity stared at him, leaning slightly back.

"What?" he asked again, annoyed. "Were you lurking in the shadows, waiting for my mom to leave so you could jump me?"

"Obviously," she snapped.

"Well, don't!" He turned to leave.

"I was only wondering what your plans were," she said.

He turned back. "They don't involve you. Stop being nosy."

"Are you leaving, then?" She sounded almost hurt.

"Yes, I'm leaving," he said. "You're not?"

Enmity shook her head. "I can't quite stomach the thought of living with the people who killed my father."

Sub-Zero felt himself scowl. "Don't forget he murdered a huge number of them first."

She tossed her head and looked away.

"Well," he said, "if you change your mind, I'm sure you'll be welcome, and there's bound to be someone around who's still in contact with Yen Sa. He'll get you to Mandalore if you ask."

He turned to leave again, but Enmity shot her finger out toward the end of the street.

"What about _that_?" she spat.

She was pointing at Tanya, who stood in the shade of a shop awning about a block away, looking lost.

Sub-Zero narrowed his eyes, looking hard at Enmity's face. "Is that what you really want?" he asked quietly.

Enmity moved her hand up to her neck but didn't answer.

"If you can't even bear to be on the same planet as the people who killed your father," he asked, "how could you ever think of being in the same bed with the man who led him to his death?"

Enmity moved her hand up to cover her mouth, barely shaking her head. Then, without a word, she turned and walked away.

Sub-Zero watched her go for a few steps, then shouted after her, "They probably make pills for that now!"

Rolling his eyes, he continued down the street to rescue Tanya.

* * *

Yuan found his mother down a side street, talking to his brother. He started to head toward her, but Ching pulled at his arm, holding him back.

"That looks personal," she warned.

Yuan could see why she'd say that, but he didn't care that much. However, Ching came around him to subtly block his way down the street, so he sighed and leaned against a shop wall to wait.

While his mother and his brother talked, Mr. Yen came down the main street and saw them waiting just off the corner. He grinned and spread his hands wide.

"Let me shake your hands," he said, reaching first to Ching, then to Yuan.

Ching looked embarrassed. "I think we've been thanked by everyone in town now."

"You gave us back our home," said Mr. Yen. "Just imagine what that means to us."

"You must have loved Mandalore," said Yuan, "to give up your company to go there."

Mr. Yen gave Yuan a sly smile. "Who ever said I was giving it up?"

"But you're going to Mandalore."

"I'm _moving_ my company, Yuan, not giving it up."

"Won't that cause a lot of problems?" asked Ching. "It's not like you're moving across town."

"Oh, I'll probably default on some contracts during the transition," said Mr. Yen, "but it's not like they'll be able to find me."

Yuan snorted.

"With your skills, of course," Mr. Yen addressed him, "you'll always be welcome to work for me."

Yuan grinned and looked at Ching. "I can imagine myself taking you up on that." Thinking over the offer again, Yuan snapped his head back to look at Mr. Yen. "Wait, you're not going to make me your PR rep or something, are you?"

"Not those skills," Mr. Yen answered wearily. "I had actually planned to ask for your help on a special project."

Yuan raised his eyebrows. "I'm listening."

Mr. Yen lowered his head. "I'm going to try to—hmm—_cure_ Cyrax. Well, as much as possible," he added, looking up again. "I can't get him his body back, but if I can give him consciousness..."

"Will he even want it?" asked Ching.

Mr. Yen shrugged and sighed. "At least we'll be able to ask."

No one spoke for a few seconds. Yuan glanced back down the street toward his brother and saw only him and that Edenian bimbo he'd picked up. He frowned, then turned back to Mr. Yen. "Well, I'll definitely help go through any of your scientist's notes on the procedure," he said, trying to wrap up their conversation.

Mr. Yen seemed to notice his impatience and smiled wanly. "Just let me know when you want to start."

Yuan nodded hurriedly and then dodged between Ching and Mr. Yen.

"Where'd Mom go?" he demanded as soon as he had reached his brother. Ching was right behind him.

"How should I know?" his brother answered, looking annoyed at being interrupted.

Tanya stepped around his brother, fluttering her lashes above her large, dark eyes. She stepped very close to Yuan before practically whispering, "I don't believe we've met."

"I'm Yuan," he said, uncomfortable.

Tanya leaned in to kiss him on the cheek, but his brother grabbed her and yanked her backward.

"None of that," he said sternly, letting her go. "If you want me to be your boyfriend, there can't be any of that."

Yuan expected her to sulk or fight, but instead her face lit up like he had asked her to marry him.

"Okay," she said cheerily, beaming.

Sub-Zero gave Yuan a searching look, and Yuan stared back at him, confused. Finally, Sub-Zero took a step toward him. "Can we talk privately?" he asked.

"Hey, I didn't do anything," Yuan protested. "It was her." He started to point toward Tanya, but his brother caught his arm and forced it back down.

"It's not about that," he said, looking at Yuan intensely again.

Yuan backed away, then let his brother lead him a few yards down the street. Tanya turned her smile on Ching. Ching looked pained.

"I thought you might be interested in this," his brother said, pulling a black leather-bound book out of his pocket and handing it to Yuan. "It's the experiment diary of that witch, Ennir."

Intrigued, Yuan flipped it open, but it was all in some language he'd never seen. He tilted the pages toward his brother. "What's this?"

"Edenian. You can translate it if you want, but I won't help you."

"Thanks," Yuan said sarcastically.

His brother took a step away, then turned back and came closer than before. Yuan had to tilt his head back to look up at him.

"Listen," he said quietly, "don't tell our mother."

Yuan blinked. "Don't tell her what?"

His brother tugged on the pages of the journal, and Yuan let him flip them until he reached an entry at the back accompanied by an illustration of a ninja.

"This," he said, pointing at the title, "is Ermac." He moved his finger down the page and ran it across a line. "And this says, 'created from the souls of fallen Mandalorian Honor Guards Zhen Feng Qui, Tieh Chen Yi, and _Rah Cai Yue_'."

Yuan felt his eyes widen, and he tugged the journal away and closed it. He looked up, meeting his brother's eyes, and said, "I won't tell her."

His brother gave him a little smile and patted him on the head. Yuan scowled as he watched him return to where Tanya and Ching stood, looking awkward. He let Tanya take him by the arm and walked away down the street.

Ching came to Yuan. The sky was rapidly darkening, and the street lights had come on.

"So what about us?" she asked.

Yuan panicked briefly. "There's a question about us?"

"Are we going or are we staying?" she asked patiently.

"Oh, _that_," he said, crossing his arms against the chill in the air. "I've thought about staying. I think I'll miss this place." He shook his head. "But everyone I know is going."

"Yes," Ching answered, "though it might actually be a good idea to get you away from your family for a while. See if we can't cut those apron strings."

"Maybe we shouldn't do either," Yuan said, looking up into the sky.

"You mean we should do both."

"No," he answered. "Both and more." He looked down at Ching. "Let's go everywhere. Earth, Mandalore, Edenia, everywhere. Let's see all the worlds we saved."

Ching looked overwhelmed, widening her eyes and shaking her head. "Everywhere? Are we supposed to drag your friend around with us so we can get there?"

"The Vyrenchi will take us," he said. "It might take a bit longer, but I bet they know where everything is. A collective consciousness like that probably never forgets anything."

"And you want to visit everywhere."

Yuan put his hands on his hips. "Did we do all this for ourselves?"

Ching surprised him by considering that for a moment. "Maybe."

He took a moment to think, too. "You might be right," he admitted. "But that doesn't mean we can't learn to appreciate everyone else now."

"I don't know, Yuan," Ching said, folding her arms. "I don't think everywhere is going to be happy to see us. The mutants for one were very cold to me when we visited Kitana."

"That's because you killed one of their heroes." Yuan looked back up at the sky.

"Yeah," Ching sighed. "I should do that less often."

"I think that's another noble goal for our future," he said. "Travel everything. No killing. And no conquering," he added quickly.

"Can we quit the manifesto?" Ching asked drily. "I just want to live."

Yuan looked back over at her, smiling. Then he grabbed her by the hand. "Come on," he said. "Let's get my telescope."


End file.
